I get quite a few calls as Executive Director of Guns Save Life. Lots are spammy. Some are silly. A few are deadly serious. This was one of the latter.
A single mother who works full-time called me on a Monday morning in early August. She’d had a bad few days. I’ve had a few myself. My divorce is like emotional waterboarding, but with extra paperwork.
She told me that she had shot a home invader who tried to stab her 13-year-old son to death.
She had my attention.
It all began a few minutes before 5:00pm on a Wednesday. Some town bullies found her kids and started threatening them. One of them, a kid named Jasiyah, had a large hunting knife and brazenly told her boy, again and again, “I promise you that I’m gonna kill you.” Then, just for added flavor, “I’m gonna show you why they call me knife boy, bro.”
A bystander heard him add that he was going to “gut you like a hog.”
The homeowner’s kids did the only sane thing. They ran home. They got inside. Before they could lock the door, “knife boy” charged, put his shoulder into the door, and forced it open. He stormed in, blade in hand, hunting the homeowner’s son.
Three others followed him into the house; Jasiyah’s younger brother, a 14-year-old girl, and Jasiyah’s 40-year-old mother. It was some kind of family outing…if your idea of bonding is an armed home invasion with murderous intent.
Jasiyah, the lead idiot, rushed in waving his cutlery like he’d just graduated magna cum laude from the YouTube University of Bad Decisions and lunged for the kid, trying to stick him. Mom got her gun. She warned Jasiyah to stop. Jasiyah sneered and lunged. She warned him again. He talked trash and lunged once more, so she shot him. Once.
Then she did something almost nobody would. She tried to keep the armed, home-invading perp who had just tried to kill her child from bleeding out on her carpet. That’s not weakness. That’s a mother who still had more humanity and mercy in her than the entire quartet that had invaded her home.
Of course there was chaos. Most everyone ran out. The mother of the would-be killer continued battering the homeowner’s 14-year-old daughter. Cops arrived a minute or two later and took over the bleeding control.
They asked what happened. She told them she had shot him. They cuffed her, stuffed her in a cruiser, parked her in an interrogation room, and took her gun as evidence. When they asked for a statement, she said she wanted an attorney first. Good girl.
Four hours later they released her with no charges, no statements, and no apology. The same officers who might have been bagging her child’s body treated her like the threat.
Family and friends of the failed stabber started talking revenge, driving this single mother into hiding. She found herself disarmed, exhausted and not sleeping well. That’s classic post-use-of-force side effects for survivors.
That’s when she reached out to me. Her mom had given her my name and number. “He might be able to help you.” She asked questions and I gave her answers. She shared some details I’ve forgotten, but there was one back-and-forth I do remember.
I asked if the police taken her gun. I already knew the answer.
“How did you know?” she asked.
“You got another one?”
“No. I don’t,” she told me.
There was a pause for a few beats.
“You want one?” I asked.
The silence on the other end was an exhausted, scared woman who couldn’t believe what she had just heard and was processing it.
“You’re kidding, right? I mean… you don’t even know me.” I could hear it in her voice as it started to crack. Please let this be real and not a joke.
I shared how I thought she was a perfect candidate for one of those occasional GSL drawing guns I win by dropping twenty bucks in the ticket jar. One was still in my safe…a Ruger Security-9 Compact with a laser. Perfect.
I ran the private transfer through the ISP, got the approval, and asked when she wanted to meet. Meanwhile, a gun without ammo is just an expensive paperweight, so I tossed in two boxes of Winchester Law Enforcement personal defense ammo. She already had a carry license (very good), so I bought her a holster for it, too and included a couple of copies of GunNews, so she’d know who Guns Save Life was.
On the 73rd hour after the offer—Illinois makes you wait 72—I handed her a bag at Freedom Sports Shop in El Paso. For me, it felt like an errand. For her, it was the difference between cowering in fear and standing tall knowing that she could (once again) protect her family.
A mother who did everything right. A police department that sent her home empty-handed. And the knife clown’s electric-scooter infantry pals plotting a bloody sequel. The least I could do was make sure that the next time someone forced open her door, they wouldn’t find her armed with nothing but good manners and an order of protection.
Hold On, It Gets Better
The pack that tried to murder a child in his own house won’t slink off. They’re threatening the single mother who protected her son and her other children. On Facebook, the knife boy’s mommy is organized a pity parade: “Justice for Jasiyah.” On the streets they’re talking vengeance.
Justice…for the kid who showed up with a hunting knife and forced his way into his target’s home.
The mom is a felon. Amanda Wenger has got a long criminal history record in Stephenson County, Illinois. She joined her knife-wielding son in invading another woman’s residence and battering the homeowner’s 14-year-old daughter.
Days later, she was lobbying for the local prosecutor to charge the homeowner for defending her son in her own home. She posted on Facebook that she wanted to hold a “Justice for Jasiya” rally.
This is intended to be a peaceful demonstration. We expect everyone attending to conduct themselves peacefully, respectfully, and lawfully.
NO VIOLENCE. NO THREATS. NO RETALIATION.
What about dad?
Glad you asked. Here’s a Facebook photo of Jasiyah and his father, Julius Pendleton, from Independence Day this year. Note the matching father-and-son ankle monitors.
Later that same night, dad got drunk. He felt “disrespected,” pulled a .45, and played tough guy. More sober adults got tired of his mouth and took the gun away. Julius Pendleton still wanted to fight. He wanted his gun back. So they gave it back, bullets first.
They shot him nine times with a .45 ACP-caliber pistol, and like a cockroach, he lived. His consolation prize: a wheelchair. He had a monitor because last October he lead cops on a 120-mph chase across the Iowa–Illinois line and collected a stack of charges, including felon in possession. Because gun control is for chumps, right?
The car chase ended in Illinois and under our soft-on-crime justice system, he was out in plenty of time for the July 4th holiday with an ankle monitor and a pinkie promise to behave.
These are the people who wanted a rally asking for “Justice for Jasiyah.”
It’s all a hustle. The only decent adult in this entire social trainwreck is the mother who put a hole in the armed threat and then tried to save the kid’s life. A working single mom with no criminal history, a FOID card, a carry permit.
She didn’t hunt anyone. She didn’t crash through a door. She didn’t promise to gut a seventh-grader like a hog. She stopped the person who did all of that.
Everyone can keep their children alive the same way she did. When feral, armed people come through the door, you can end the the threat before it reaches your child.
Epilogue
Thanks to Guns Save Life and my winning five-dollar drawing ticket, the mother has a gun again to replace the one the cops bagged as evidence after she used it to keep her son from being opened up like livestock. She also has JHP ammo and a legal-defense policy.
Paperwork. Ammunition. A real lawyer. And a second chance the system declined to hand her.
If Jasiyah and his scooter infantry come back to try to cash in on the murder threat, they may fully meet the back half of FAFO equation. Just in case the initial free sample—hunting knife, shoulder through the door, “knife boy” shot—wasn’t a sufficient lesson.
The back half is a woman who’s already been forced to do this once, is armed again, and is finished bleeding on behalf of other people’s children. She now knows she’s willing to do what’s needed to protect her family from anyone who storms her home in a violent, tumultuous rush.
Wenger can keep the hashtag. Julius can keep the chair. Jasiyah can keep his souvenir scar. Most importantly, the homeowner gets to keep her kids. That’s the only justice in this story.