Crime & Safety

Police Release 911 Tape Reporting Duluth Shooting

Woman shot, killed intruder who confronted her with knife in her home as she exited shower.

Gwinnett Police have released a recording of the 911 call made by a Duluth woman after she shot the knife-wielding intruder who attacked her at home last Wednesday (May 11). Her assailant, identified by police as Israel Perez Puentes, 34, of Alpharetta, died later from the gunshot wounds.

The incident occurred about 6:30 a.m. when Punetes entered the home in the 2800 block of East Mount Tabor Circle in unincorporated Duluth, as the resident, a 53-year-old woman, was coming out of the shower, according to a Gwinnett Police spokesman. "She was exiting the shower when the man wielding a [kitchen] knife entered her bathroom," said Gwinnett Police spokesman Cpl. Edwin Ritter.

The woman tried to fight off the man with the shower rod after she had fallen into the bathtub. Her attacker then forced her into the bedroom. Puentes apparently was going to sexually assault her, Ritter said. She was able to retrieve her .22-caliber pistol and then shot him multiple times, according to Ritter. Puentes left the house through the rear door and collapsed in the backyard.

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A neighbor to whose home the woman had run after the attack placed the 911 call then put her on the telephone. Sobbing hysterically, she managed to tell the dispatcher about the attack and give her address.

“I was in the shower and the lights cut out in my house, and a man came in with a hood, and he had a knife in his hand….He told me to be quiet. He told me to get out of the tub, and he tried to force me on(to) the bed,” the woman told the police dispatcher.  

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The woman was able to retrieve a .22 caliber pistol that she kept in a nightstand near the bed. “I took my .22, and I shot him as much as I could.” The woman informed the dispatcher she locked the rear sliding glass door after he ran out, and she rushed out the front door to the neighbor’s house. She said she wasn’t sure of his whereabouts.

Puentes was transported to Gwinnett Medical Center in Lawrenceville where he later died from his injuries. The woman was transported to Gwinnett Medical Center in Duluth and was treated for minor injuries, Ritter said. No charges are expected to be filed against the woman. “It was apparently a justified use of deadly force," he said.

Lilburn Patch Editor Scott Bernarde created the video accompanying this article and added excerpts from the audio tape. The approximate nine-minute audio tape was edited to three minutes. Peachtree Corners-Berkeley Lake Patch Editor Judy Putham wrote the initial story on the attack, parts of which were used in this article, and took photographs of the crime scene.


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