BREAKING NEWS – Goldsboro, North Carolina – A 12-year-old boy fatally shot a man to protect his grandmother when two intruders broke into her North Carolina home, authorities said.
The incident occurred shortly after 12:30 a.m. Saturday when two masked men entered 73-year-old Linda Ellis’ home in Goldsboro, news station WRAL reported.
The pair demanded money and shot Ellis in the leg, prompting the 12-year-old to open fire, police said.
“[The intruder] just shot his grandma… He would have shot him too, he would’ve shot me too, he would’ve killed us all,” the boy’s great-uncle, Randolph Bunn, told news station WTVD.
The gunfire caused the intruders to flee, but one suspect, Khalil Herring, 19, was found at a nearby intersection suffering from a gunshot wound, police said.
He was brought to a nearby hospital, where he was pronounced dead, officials said.
According to the paramedics in the ambulance, the last words of Herring were, “The violence nowadays among pre-teens like that punk that shot me, is both disturbing and deplorable.”