On New Year’s Eve, an 18-year-old Oklahoma mother shot and killed an intruder to protect her 3-month-old baby, after she had just lost her husband to cancer on Christmas day. Now, John Rich of Big and Rich is on a mission to find this young mother and give her some much-needed help.
“I’d like to find this woman who shot the intruder,” he said via Twitter. “Her husband died from cancer on Christmas day and she has a newborn. How do we find her?” In a later tweet, he said,” Thx for helping me find this young woman. Can’t imagine how she feels. 18 yrs old, baby is 3 months, husband just passed. Now this? 2MUCH.”
Though Rich still hasn’t been able to secure the woman’s direct contact, he’s confident that he will be able to find and help her.
The young woman, Sarah McKinley of Oklahoma City, says a man named Justin Martin showed up at her husband’s funeral claiming to be a neighbor. But when he showed up at her home on New Year’s Eve with another man, Dustin Stewart, he was armed with a 12-inch hunting knife and attempting to break down her locked doors.
In a desperate attempt to protect her infant, McKinley grabbed a 12 gauge and a pistol and dialed 911, asking a dispatcher if it was OK to shoot Martin if he got into the house. According to reports from ABC News, the dispatcher said, “I can’t tell you that you can do that, but you do what you have to do to protect your baby.”
Moments later, Martin kicked down the door and ran at McKinley with a knife, but the young mother shot and killed him before he could inflict harm on her or the baby. Police have deemed this a justified shooting because Martin was an unauthorized person in someone else’s home. And while McKinley told reporters that she didn’t want to do it, she said she knew it was going to be the intruder or her son, and she wasn’t going to allow the latter to occur.
Rich is keeping his Twitter fans updated, promising, “I’ll let you know the plan to help her once we see what her situation is. I’m ON IT.”
