Disabled man scared off would-be burglars with walking frame-mounted gun

Sixty-eight-year-old Joseph Sapienza suspects the men who attempted to break into his home in Gastonia, North Carolina, on Thursday night thought he would be an easy target because he’s disabled and uses a walking frame. But after scaring away the would-be thieves, Sapienza taped a note to his door, in which he attempted to make it clear that his trigger finger works just fine.



“(If) you try to break in my house again, I will be waiting on you,” reads the note. “Enter at your own risk.” Sapienza was watching television in his bed at 7:42pm. He heard someone prying off the lock and pulling the nails to the latch out of his front door. He grabbed his .45-calibre handgun, put it in a holster on his walker and began shuffling toward the sound.

He flipped a hallway light on, yelled out to announce he was armed, and yanked open the door to see two men wearing ski masks. They jumped off his porch and practically tripped over one another trying to flee, Sapienza said. “It was like a Keystone Cops scene,” he said. “When they saw the .45, one ran one way up the street, and the other went the other way.”



Sapienza has been disabled since 1980, when he was riding his bicycle to work and was hit by a truck, breaking his pelvis. He now uses a motorised scooter to get around outside, and thinks the suspects saw him as an easy target. “People see me as an easy mark,” he said. “They probably thought ‘we’re going to get this man’s money.’” He hopes the suspects don’t come back, for their own sakes. “I’m pretty proficient with it,” he said of his .45. Police are investigating, but have so far made no arrests.