PASADENA, TEXAS — When he saw two men pry into his neighbor's house with a crowbar one afternoon earlier this month, Joe Horn did what many people would do: He called 911.
But when police had not shown up by the time the suspects were about to leave, the 61-year-old retiree did something most people probably would not: He stepped outside with his 12-gauge shotgun and killed them.
"I'm not going to let them get away with this," Horn told the 911 dispatcher, who responded: "Property's not worth killing someone over."
Seconds later, the sound of a gun being loaded could be heard on the 911 tape, followed by a warning -- "Move [and] you're dead" -- and then three bursts of gunfire. Miguel DeJesus, 38, and Diego Ortiz, 30, both of whom had small-time criminal histories, died of their wounds.
The six-minute recording of Horn's anger, frustration and eagerness to take the law into his own hands has made him the focus of a national controversy. Critics condemn him as a vigilante bent on meting out murderous justice. Admirers praise him as a courageous hero whom any law abider would love to have next door.
"Why is he still a free man?" Linda E. Edwards wrote in a letter to the Houston Chronicle.
"Joe Horn gets a Texas 'attaboy' from me," countered John E. Meagher in the next letter. "Justice was served, law or not."
As the debate rages on talk radio and cable-TV news shows, Horn remains free.
However, his attorney said, Horn was so overwrought with grief and overwhelmed by the media glare that he left his home in this blue-collar suburb best known as the former home of Gilley's, the honky-tonk bar in the 1980 movie "Urban Cowboy."
"Joe has never been anything but a gentle person. He's not the type of monster that they are making him out to be," attorney Tom Lambright told Houston radio host Michael Berry, who played a spoof of Bob Marley's "I Shot the Sheriff" called "I Shot the Burglar." yLambright did not return requests for comment.
Authorities are still investigating the Nov. 14 incident, but they plan to let a Harris County grand jury decide whether Horn, a former computer consultant, should be charged.
"This is not an individual who stepped outside and gunned down two pedestrians on the sidewalk," said Pasadena Police Capt. A.H. "Bud" Corbett. "In a situation where there is some uncertainty about which side of the law someone was on, the best thing to do is assemble all the information and present it to the grand jury."
