Illinois Mom Fatally Shoots Intruder While Protecting Child

A woman in Joliet, Illinois used her handgun to defend herself and her baby last Friday night, shooting and killing the stranger who broke in to her home. 

According to Joliet police, the incident happened around 10:30 Friday evening, and thankfully the woman wasn’t defenseless when the intruder gained entry to her home. 

Police said the woman, armed with a gun, heard someone break into her home. That’s when she took her child and hid in a bedroom closet on the second floor.

Police believe that when the suspect entered that bedroom, the woman opened fire, striking him in the head. The suspect was pronounced dead on the scene.

Responding officers found the woman and her child in the adjacent bedroom, police said.

The suspect was wearing gloves and had a screwdriver at the time. The woman did not know who he was, and his identity has not yet been released.

That’s about all the information that the Joliet PD has released at this point, so we don’t know if the armed mom had a valid FOID card or if she could end up facing charges for illegally possessing the gun she used to defend herself and her baby. We also don’t know anything about the perpetrator who was shot and killed, including any previous criminal charges he might have faced. 

Though it wouldn’t be a good look for prosecutors to go after her if she didn’t have the proper paperwork to exercise her right to keep and bear arms, it also wouldn’t be all that surprising. Meanwhile, violent offenders in Illinois keep getting slaps on the wrist and are spit back out onto the streets to re-offend.

Prosecutors said 32-year-old Keyruni Buford and another man ambushed a 47-year-old woman in the 7600 block of South Champlain Avenue around 2 a.m. on September 16, 2023. The woman was sitting inside her 2021 Nissan Sentra when the pair climbed in and forced her out of the driver’s seat at gunpoint. 

Detectives tracked the stolen car to a nearby McDonald’s, where surveillance cameras captured Buford stepping out of the passenger seat, according to prosecutors.

Chicago police had a unique advantage in the investigation: Buford was already wearing electronic monitoring and GPS bracelets from a prior domestic battery case. Prosecutors said both ankle monitors placed him at the carjacking scene and matched his movements with the stolen Nissan.

As CWB Chicago notes, Buford was sentenced to six years in prison back in 2018 for robbery, a crime he committed while out on parole for committing another robbery five years earlier. And though this is at least the third violent felony conviction for Buford, under Illinois law he’ll be eligible to be released in less than five years; one day off his sentence for every day of good behavior behind bars, and credit for 697 days he spent in jail awaiting trial. 

The fact that Buford was held that long without being allowed to post bond is an anomaly in Chicago’s criminal justice system, but now that he’s pleaded guilty to vehicular hijacking he’ll reap the benefits of the state’s soft-on-crime policies.

Like New York, it’s much easier to illegally get a gun in Illinois than to acquire a FOID card and a concealed carry permit. There are no ranges in Joliet, so any resident who wants to be able to lawfully bear arms in self-defense outside their home will have to travel to another town for the live-fire portion of the state’s 16 hours of mandated training. Violent criminals like Buford, though, can readily find a gun on the black market, and while simply carrying a gun without a permit can lead to felony charges, those are often dismissed outright during plea bargains when the defendant is also accused of committing a crime of violence.

I’m glad that Illinois’ ill-conceived gun laws didn’t stop this mom from getting a gun and using it to protect herself and her child, but if politicians like Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Attorney General Kwame Raoul had their way she would have been unarmed and defenseless last Friday night. You won’t see either of them praise this armed citizen for her actions, but I’m willing to bet that her neighbors see her as a hero for ending the threat to herself and her baby when a stranger broke into her home. 

Editor’s Note: Self-defense is a human right, and that right is being violated by anti-gun officials every day in Illinois. 

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