Kevin Grasha

kgrasha@enquirer.com

It was an 82-year-old man who shot and wounded an intruder early Sunday morning after he said the intruder broke into his screened-in porch and “was kicking in my entrance door,” police records show.

Claude Carmical said he told the intruder several times to get out, turned on the porch light and even showed the man his .38-caliber pistol, according to the records. He aimed the gun at the man’s left shoulder.

“He kept trying to get in,” the Colerain Township man said in a 911 call released Monday. “I just let him have it in the shoulder and knocked him down.”

Colerain Twp. police: Man shot trying to get into wrong house

Carmical told the operator that he intentionally did not aim for the man’s “vital parts.” He fired one shot through the front door’s glass window, striking 32-year-old Erwin Cardenas in the left shoulder.

Cardenas is from Miamisburg and told police he was visiting his uncle. According to police reports released Monday, he said he went outside to smoke a cigarette and was trying to get back inside his uncle’s house.

Carmical’s house is in the 2800 block of Compton Road. Cardenas' uncle lives less than a tenth of a mile away, on Pippin Road. The shooting happened at about 3 a.m.

“After (Cardenas) found the door to be locked, he began to force the door to get inside,” Colerain Township police said in a statement.

Cardenas was taken to University of Cincinnati Medical Center, where he has been receiving treatment, police said. He told police he believed his uncle's roommate had shot him. Police did not release information about whether he was intoxicated.

“Do you know the person?” the operator asked Carmical during the 911 call.

“No. Never seen him before in my life,” he said.

After being shot, Cardenas fled to a neighboring yard, where police found him. When an officer asked him where his uncle's house was, he responded, "Here," according to a police report.

Police said charges against Cardenas are pending. Records show he has multiple misdemeanor driving-related convictions, dating back 15 years. Several were for driving without a license.