UPDATE: Burglars meet match in armed neighbors, dog

UPDATED 4:45 p.m.

No one was home.

Josh Burson and his family had gone out earlier that morning to the Caddo Parish Courthouse. On the way back, they stopped by a grocery store — a delay that may have kept them from arriving home as two burglars were inside their Southern Hills neighborhood house around mid-day Monday.

“We would have been in the middle of it,” Burson said.

Marcella Ogunmayin was visiting her mother on the 3000 block of Burson Drive as she did every morning when she heard the bang. (And, yes, the Bursons live on Burson Drive.)

Ogunmayin thought it was the sound of car door closing, an expected visitor in the driveway.

“Nobody was out there,” she said.

But there was someone across the street. In broad daylight, she saw two men kicking the Bursons’ front door. Other neighbors had seen the pair in a gray Chevy Impala creep past the house at the end of the street.

The two men then parked the Chevy at a vacant home nearby on a sweeping corner of the winding street of working-class homes. They walked toward the Bursons' house.

The men kicked the front door again. That's when Ogunmayin called 911.

Luckily, no one was in the Burson home.

Burson's father called to let him know the home had been broken into, and Burson returned home to all the cops.

The burglars hadn't been in the house long, but long enough to create havoc. Burson said the master bedroom had been ransacked. The room shared by his twin 1-year-old sons — Wilder and Remington — had been torn up. Power tools used for recent renovations and other valuables were piled up for taking.

Burson's family had lived in the house for only a month, he said.

The blue lights must have spooked the men, he suggested. He said the burglars left through his 3-year-old daughter Ava’s window.

That’s when the men ran into Burson’s 1-year-old pit bull/lab mix, Chyna, and it didn't seem that the encounter ended well for at least one of the intruders. He lost a sock that police recovered from the back yard, Burson said

“I think she got him on the foot,” he said. “There wasn’t a shoe back there, but there was a sock laying on the ground, and it had some holes in it. So I think she got him whenever he was jumping out the window. … We gave her a big ol’ bone for that last night.”

After leaving the house without the items they apparently intended to steal, the two men split up.

One was held up by a neighbor a couple of doors down. The neighbor, who declined to give his full name, said he snuck up on the burglar, who was hiding in pampas grass near the neighbor's above-ground swimming pool.

With his pistol drawn, the neighbor said, he ordered the man to the ground until officers could haul him off.

The police account of the burglar's arrests made no mention pampas grass encounter.

A citizen gunman stopped the other burglar. According to police, the burglar confronted the citizen and his father in a yard, pointing a .22-caliber pistol with a silencer at the pair. The armed citizen then fired a shot at the burglar, prompting him to drop his weapon.

Police, who already were in the neighborhood because of Ogunmayin's 911 call, arrived quickly to arrest both of the alleged burglars.

Tarodganey Sumner, 26, of the 600 block of Bringhurst Drive, was arrested after encountering the pair of citizens, police said. Also arrested was Calvin Horton, 27, of the 500 block of West 76th Street.

Sumner and Horton were each charged with one count of aggravated burglary and one count of felon in possession of a firearm. Sumner also was charged with illegal possession of a stolen firearm and two counts of aggravated assault.

Both were booked into the Shreveport City Jail. More charges were expected, police said.

Authorities said they still were investigating to determine if Summer and Horton are involved in a string of burglaries in the area where pets have been killed.

Burson said he is thankful that his family and his dog are safe.

“Thank God for our neighbors,” he said. "They completely saved our house from being ransacked too bad."

ORIGINAL STORY

Police have arrested two suspected burglars thanks to proactive neighbors and a quick response.

Arrested were Tarodganey Sumner, 26, of the 600 block of Bringhurst Drive, and Calvin Horton, 27, of the 500 block of West 76th Street, on burglary and firearms charges.

The Shreveport Police Department gave this account:

Just after 11:45 a.m. Monday, in the Southern Hills neighborhood of south Shreveport, a concerned neighbor witnessed two men forcibly entering a house in the 3000 block of Burson Drive.

Patrol officers and liaison officers were nearby and arrived quickly. One man fled from the residence on foot. A neighbor and his father were in the backyard of another residence when they encountered the man, whom police identified as Sumner, 26.

The man allegedly aimed a .22-caliber pistol with a silencer at them, prompting the citizen to fire a shot to defend his life and the life of his father. The shot missed the man but caused him to drop his weapon and surrender.

More: Family pets injured, killed in Southern Hills burglaries

The neighbor and his father yelled out to officers, who found them and arrested Sumner.

Horton was found in another neighbor’s yard and arrested.

Investigators and officers found the alleged burglars' dark gray, four-door Chevy Impala parked at another residence in the neighborhood. Inside that vehicle, they found a 9-mm handgun with silencer, bags of jewelry, and a small amount of marijuana.

Police later determined that the jewelry had been taken during a separate home burglary earlier Monday in the 300 block of Atlantic in the Broadmoor neighborhood.

The .22-caliber handgun that was in Sumner's possession when he was arrested had been stolen during a burglary on Maryland Avenue in the South Highland’s neighborhood, police said.

Sumner and Horton were each charged with one count of aggravated burglary and one count of felon in possession of a firearm. Sumner also was charged with illegal possession of a stolen firearm and two counts of aggravated assault.

Both were booked into the Shreveport City Jail. More charges are expected, police said.