From nearly three weeks ago (but for some reason only reported on yesterday) in Mobile County, Alabama, a man broke into a house in the early morning hours of Saturday, June 5. The homeowner was awakened by a notification from his security system, and confronted the intruder while armed with a gun. Realizing the intruder wasn’t armed (and that the homeowner had left his cell phone in the other room and couldn’t easily call for help while also holding the intruder), the homeowner chose to simply march the would-be burglar to the door at gunpoint and turn him loose. The homeowner did fire a couple of “warning shots” when the burglar started trying to go back into the house to retrieve his own cell phone, at which point the burglar did leave. (You really shouldn’t be firing “warning shots”, although in this case it seems to have worked out OK. And, as the homeowner points out, a lot of people in that part of the world would have just shot someone who had broken into their home in the middle of the night.)
Law enforcement were able to track down and arrest the burglar rather easily, since they had his cell phone (someone even called and asked for the guy by name—a call which was answered by a sheriff’s deputy).