DETROIT (WXYZ) — Detroit Police are investigating what may have started as an attempted home invasion and ended in a deadly shooting.
It happened around 4:30 Tuesday morning in a neighborhood near West McNichols and Telegraph on Detroit's west side.
The 62-year-old homeowner said a man he knows through his girlfriend came by in the early morning hours, banging on their doors and windows while threatening to kill them both.
The homeowner said the man he'd only known to be nice and friendly was now belligerent, complaining that his live-in girlfriend owed him some money.
He said the man fired two gunshots before breaking a window on the side of the house.
He's unsure if any of the man's gunshots hit the house but they called 911 for help.
The homeowner said he told the man that he would get him any money he thought was owed to him but that the man wanted them to open the door immediately and refused to calm down.
"He was gonna kill me.. and he was gonna kill her next," the homeowner told 7 Action News.
Over the last few years and even recently, we've seen a number of people who have been struck by bullets that penetrated homes, including this week's fatal shooting of Saniyah Pugh. Saniyah was 11-years-old.
The 62-year-old man said he retrieved his own handgun and went outside onto his porch in hopes that he could get the man to calm down and leave but instead, he said the man continued to threaten him while beginning to raise his gun.
That's when the homeowner said he had no choice but to stop the man by opening fire on him first.
Police say the man who was shot and killed is in his forties and the incident remains under investigation.
"He was so violent and angry. I've never seen anybody that violent before in my life," the homeowner told 7 Action News after spending the morning talking to investigators.
"I think he was drinking," he said. "I don't know if he was taking any kind of pills or whatever but he just was totally opposite of a nice guy. He was just a total opposite person."
