Willie Franklin Stith, III, 35, was killed after reportedly forcing a woman into her home.

WILMINGTON -- Just before 11 p.m. Monday Kay Dickinson pulled into the lot at Colonial Parke Apartments after work. With her keys and a drink in one hand, her cell phone with her father on the line in the other, she climbed the stairs to her home. On the landing she passed a man carrying a trash bag.

Just as she unlocked her door to her apartment, the man spun around, grabbed her from behind and shoved her inside. She could see he had a gun.

"We had a tussle and he choked me and gagged me and I dropped everything right there in the kitchen," Dickinson said Tuesday morning. "He knew my name, he knew my boyfriend's name, and he was like, 'Give me the money.'"

He forced Dickinson into her bedroom where she said he tied her hands behind her back with a belt and wrapped a cell phone charger cord around her mouth. As he searched the apartment, Dickinson wriggled from her bonds and grabbed the gun she keeps beside her bed.

She fired one shot and the man sprinted down the hall before falling in her doorway. Dickinson's bullet had hit him in the chest and killed him.

Police would later tell her that man was Willie Franklin Stith III, 35, a felon with multiple convictions for burglary and other crimes. Wilmington Police Department spokeswoman Linda Rawley said no charges have been filed in the shooting.

Sam Dooies, spokeswoman for New Hanover County District Attorney Ben David's office, said the office will not make a decision on whether to file charges until after Wilmington police are done investigating.

The apartment complex is in the 5000 block of Hunt Club Road, off New Centre Drive. Tuesday morning, the carpet in Dickinson's home was still spotted with blood, though police had taken her gun, a bedspread and the items used to tie her.

Dickinson said as soon as Stith was down she called 911, and police were at her apartment in five minutes.

"I didn’t know if he was alive or dead, he was grunting but I didn’t know," she said. "I put (911) on speaker and set her on the counter. I had my hands up when the police officer came to the door and they took me out of here pretty quick."

They took her to the emergency room where doctors treated bumps and cuts on her head and wrapped up the finger she hurt while firing the gun. After a night of police interviews, her boyfriend took her home around 6 a.m. and she got an hour's sleep.

Dickinson said she's had the gun for more than a year, but Monday was her first time firing it. She doesn't know how Stith knew her name or her boyfriend's but she thinks the attack was targeted.

Once Stith pushed her inside, her mind went to survival.

"When we were in here, when he had me pinned up against the stove, all I could think about was my knife block, how easy it would be to turn around and grab a knife and stab him because I just wanted him off of me," she said. "I was thinking, 'This man is going to kill me.' I really did. And when he took me to the bedroom I was thinking, you know, 'Is he going to rape me?'"

Records from the N.C. Department Of Public Safety show Stith racked up more than a dozen convictions between 1998 and 2002 in New Hanover and Cumberland counties, including second-degree burglary, possession of stolen goods, larceny, breaking and entering vehicles and assault on a public official.

Stith was featured in a 2008 StarNews story about local authorities using federal sentencing guidelines to keep armed offenders off the streets. After police searched Stith's home in 2003 and found heroin, a pistol and a shotgun, Stith pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison.

Incarceration records show that Stith was released from a Franklin County prison in September 2006 after three years and three months, and then went to federal prison until he was released in September 2015.

State records do not list him as being on probation or parole.

Dickinson said the whole ordeal with Stith lasted five or seven minutes, and thinking about it is still surreal.

"As soon as he took me in the bedroom I looked over and the gun was sitting there and I was like, 'There’s a reason why that gun is sitting there,'" she said. "I was just hoping he wouldn’t see it."

Reporter Cammie Bellamy can be reached at 910-343-2339 or Cammie.Bellamy@StarNewsOnline.com.

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