Taylor homeowner questioned by police after shooting garage intruder

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Producer's note: The original version of this story said that the homeowner was questioned for 14 hours.

A Taylor resident shot and wounded an intruder coming out of his garage.

The incident happened in the 8000 block of Oak Street at about 2:30 a.m. Tuesday. The suspect, a 27-year-old Flat Rock man, was wounded in the leg. The homeowner, 31, was arrested and later released by police.

After the shooting, FOX 2 is told the Taylor police questioned the resident for 56 minutes but was held for hours. Taylor police waited to find out whether to release him or not from the prosecutor's office, Police Chief Mary Sclabassi said.

We were there when he came home from the police station and while he didn't feel like talking about the shooting, his fiancé filled us in on what happened.

"I have kids here," she said. "If he would have come in the house ... it's very scary. You can't trust people in this world anymore."

The mother of four didn’t sleep at all early this morning after her fiancé shot the intruder found in their garage.
  
They were inside watching TV when they noticed something amiss.

"Our alarm system let us know that when any door or window opens up," said the woman who wished not to be identified. "So we hear the alarm. I get up and look, and it's the garage door."

She says her fiancé grabbed his handgun and went outside.

"He had the flashlight in one hand, his gun in the other," she said.

It was there he saw a footprint on the door leading to the garage.

"He's hearing rattling," she said. "He says I know someone is in there because I keep hearing the rattling."

The standoff lasted 10 minutes as she watched from her daughter's bedroom. When he yells for her to call police, a man ran out, she said, with his arms covering his head.

"I heard a pop. definitely a gun shot," said neighbor John Talley.

What neighbors heard according to police, was the resident shooting the Flat Rock man in the leg.

"When Jason shot him, he said he's homeless, he's sorry (and)  he has nowhere to go," the resident's fiancé said. "He was just looking for somewhere to go."

Jason, the homeowner, was taken into custody and the intruder was taken to the hospital.

"I know he didn't mean to shoot the guy," she said. "It just all happened so fast.  I don't think he was expecting someone to come out of the garage."

FOX 2 is told after the shooting police stayed out in front of the house for most of the day.

The homeowner was a legal gun owner, according to police.