Sometimes the only thing standing between life and death is a good guy with a gun. That sentiment was never truer than on Monday night in Aiken County, South Carolina when a thief broke into the home of Herbert and Lois Parrish.
Herbert, 82, and Lois, 79, Parrish were enjoying a normal Monday afternoon when a stranger knocked on the front door around 2 o’clock. According to Fox57, Lois answered the door and the stranger this is what happened.
“I opened the door and he said he was looking for his little white chihuahua and wanted to know if I saw it. I told him, no, I didn’t.
After what seemed like the end of the encounter, Lois quickly found herself in a very violent situation. The stranger, 61-year-old Harold Runnels, wouldn’t allow the door to close and eventually managed to fight his way into the Parrish’s home. Police say that once he was inside, the attacker drew a knife and proceeded to attack Lois.
Unbeknownst to the attacker at the time, Herbert Parrish spent time in the military and the Vietnam Veteran was not about to let his and his wife’s lives fall into someone else’s hands without a fight. Here were his thoughts at the time, as he describes them.
“I felt, we’re gone. He’s going to kill us and take what he can take. He was not going to go out that door and leave us alive. That’s the way I felt. That’s why I said, I’ve got to do something quick and get the edge on him. Get the advantage on him.”
Herbert Parrish, with his quick thinking, grabbed a shotgun that the couple kept near the door for exactly this reason. Then, Parrish showed that he was cool under fire, and knowing that he could not safely shoot the attacker with his wife so close, began using the rifle as a blunt club.
“I started hitting him in the head with the barrel and I know I must have hit him at least ten times right in the face, just as hard as I could hit him.”
Parrish did not stop until the attacker was unconscious and then called for help since his wife had a laceration on her head from the knife-wielding assailant.
Aiken Country Coroner Darryl Ables told Fox57 that Runnels later succumbed to his wounds in at the Augusta Medical Center.
This good guy with a gun narrative seems to keep playing out in the real world, no matter how often anti-gun politicians want to pretend that guns only promote violence. The shotgun, coupled with some courage and quick thinking, saved the lives of the Parrish couple and thwarted what would have been a horrific story from unfolding in their home.
If it weren’t for their right to bear arms, this would be a much different, and much darker, article.
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