Moms Demand Self-Defense: Texas Woman Thwarts Burglar

A 47-year old woman in Texas was able to hold an armed burglar for sheriff’s deputies after the stranger showed up on her front porch Monday morning.

Dana Clover lives in Liberty, Texas (great name, by the way) and says she always has a gun on her, which came in handy when there was a knock on her door.

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She says the man on her porch told her he was being chased by his girlfriend’s dad and wanted her to call his grandmother.

“When he sat down on the front porch, I noticed he had gloves hanging out of his back pocket, and not many boyfriends take gloves to sneak in and see their girl,” said Clover.

While he waited outside, Clover called the sheriff’s office and, sure enough, Martinez fit the description of the burglar they were looking for.

Turns out Martinez was a suspect in a burglary just a few minutes earlier, and had fled the scene when sheriff’s deputies showed up at the trailer that had been broken into. He ran to Clover’s house, but that was as far as he’d get.

“I had the door shut. I told him, ‘I’ve been calling your grandma, just hang out.’ And he laid down on the porch and I got my bigger gun out when I found out he was a bad guy and stood behind the screen door,” she said.

Clover says she had her gun pointed in his direction just in case.

“He didn’t know the shotgun was on him, thank goodness,” she said.

When deputies showed up they were able to take Martinez into custody without incident, though they did discover that he had a gun on him at the time. Law enforcement says they also found several stolen guns on the ground between the trailer that had been burgled and Clover’s home.
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Local police are praising Clover, and she’s praising them as well.

“(Clover) played it very cool. She’s to be commended for the way she handled the situation,” said Capt. Ken DeFoor with the Liberty County Sheriff’s Office.

“You’ve got to protect yourself, your family and your neighborhood. We’re a community and we need to act like one and pull together, and in this case we did and I’m proud of us all,” said Clover.

Like the vast majority of defensive gun uses in the United States, Clover didn’t have to pull the trigger to protect herself, but the fact that she was armed and ready to defend herself and her family could very well have made the difference between Martinez going to jail or Clover and her family going to the hospital. I’m glad she’s okay, and I wouldn’t be surprised if her story has other moms in Liberty investigating armed self defense as well.

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