A New Mexico grandmother is being hailed as a hero after a peaceful movie night with her granddaughter goes awry after she shoots and kills a fugitive criminal who broke into her home.
“Get back. Get back. I have a gun. Get back. Get back,” Anissa Tinin warned the stranger before opening fire.
Ten minutes before the chaos erupted, Tinin and her 4-year-old grandson were singing and dancing to Taylor Swift’s Ella Tour movie.
She called her evening with her granddaughter “a special night,” noting that they ate together and enjoyed a bath before watching a movie.
“When our lives suddenly changed, we ate popcorn and M&M’s and danced and sang together,” Tinin said. he wrote on Facebook.
That’s when an unknown man, identified by police as 34-year-old Joseph Rivera, burst through the door in a desperate attempt to hide from police.
Albuquerque police were chasing Rivera that night when they caught him on suspicion of driving a stolen vehicle. They deployed spike strips to stop him, but Rivera continued to drive over the edge of his car until he crashed.
He then set off on foot, jumped a fence into Ms Tinin’s garden and continued into her home.
“I jumped over this couch and met him at the door…That’s when he grabbed me and got upset and told me to give him the keys. He said he didn’t want to go to jail. did threaten to hurt my granddaughter and me,” Tinin said. Recalled to KRQE.
The 45-year-old grandmother tried to calm the alleged attacker, but eventually handed him a key chain to get him to leave the house.
“I told him I’m going to do whatever he wants so he doesn’t hurt us. I’ll give him the keys, the money, whatever he needs,” Tinin said. Ta.
On the way to his car, Tinnin called 911. The call showed her coaxing her young grandson into hiding in her bedroom.
“I need you to be really brave right now. I have to go. Stay here in the bedroom…it’s okay, baby,” Tinin can be heard saying in between the girl’s cries.
The fearless grandmother grabbed a gun in case the robbers returned. He did so a few minutes later when he heard police sirens approaching the house.
Rivera allegedly burst through the locked front door and lunged at Tinin, despite her pleas for him to stop.
“Go back. Go back. I have a gun. Go back. Go back. I’ll shoot you dead,” Tinnin warned just before pulling the trigger.
When the injured Rivera asked the woman why she fired her, she replied, “Because you’re in my shitty house!”
Mr. Tinin then offered to help put pressure on Mr. Rivera’s gunshot wound and bring him water, but warned him that if he tried any tricks, he would not hesitate to shoot him again.
Police arrived minutes later and pulled Rivera from the home.
“We believe we had a guardian angel here and we strongly believe that God was watching over us,” Tinin said.
Rivera was charged with robbery with attempted felonious robbery and auto theft, in addition to his previous five felony convictions for robbery and auto theft.
He was wanted for a criminal record at the time of his latest arrest, but did not appear in court when a judge released him on bail.
“This city is a mess. Criminals ruin the lives of innocent people every day. I’m tired of the leaders of this city being silent about the disaster they’ve caused,” Tinin said in a Facebook post. I scolded him.
