



A 63-year-old Indiana woman used an interesting weapon to fight off a would-be robber after he broke into her home and threatened her and her husband. She attacked the guy with her trusty back scratcher.

On June 16 at 9:30 p.m., Patty Kearney and her husband Don, 69, were home watching television when they heard a crash. “It sounded like someone had hit the house with something,” Patty tells Yahoo Shine. “My husband went outside to investigate but a minute later, he backed up slowly into the living room holding up his hands. He said, ‘Don’t hurt us.’”

A man wearing a green hoodie, a pair of Chicago Cubs gloves, and a hockey mask was following Don and carrying a wrench and a roll of duct tape. “He said, ‘Give me your gun,'” Patty recalls. “I answered, ‘What gun? We don’t have one!’” After the couple offered the man money, he ordered Patty to restrain her husband using the duct tape.

“I simply answered no,” she said. “I knew that once I taped up Don, that would be the end for us.” Patty, who uses oxygen for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and lung cancer (she’s in remission), then asked the man if he had a gun. He admitted that he didn't. Emboldened by his confession, Patty quickly grabbed a nearby wooden back scratcher. “This stick has served me well, having once used it to kill two bats,” she says. Patty attacked the man, hitting him in his face mask and yelling, ‘Not in my house, you don’t!’ Startled, the intruder dropped the wrench and she quickly picked it up, dropping the scratcher in the process. “I hit him four times on his body and head while dragging my oxygen tubes behind me,” she says. “I felt he would have killed us otherwise.”

Finally, the man stumbled out of the house, leaving a blood trail behind him — evidence for the police to collect and send to the lab later that night. Though the robber is still on the run, Patty is certain he'll be arrested. “He didn’t seem that intelligent,” she says. “What robber admits to not having a gun? And the duct tape and wrench were mine! He broke into our garage and stole them. What an amateur.”

The local police department has called Patty a hero, and Don is awestruck by his wife’s bravery. However, Patty has had trouble sleeping since the break-in occurred. “We installed a fancy alarm system on our windows and a deadbolt on the door,” she says. “I was terrified, but I advise other women to not let fear paralyze them — use whatever you have at your disposal to protect yourself."

In July, another Indiana woman fended off three robbers who broke into her home using a Guitar Hero video game controller.. After the men threatened to shoot her, she grabbed the nearby controller, hitting one with the toy and pushing the other down a flight of stairs, while the third fled.



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