Firearm trumps knife and bear spray
by Robert
A. Waters
At 11:30
on the morning of August 4, 2019, realtor Dawna Hetzler was preparing to show a
home at Aspen Hills Condominiums in Commerce City, Colorado.
Hetzler
described the incident to a reporter at 9News.com. “You train for something like that,” she
said, “and you pray you never have to do it.
And then you find yourself in that situation and it’s very surreal. If I did not have my firearm, I would not be
here today…
“I was
setting up for an open house and went into the place and turned on the lights. Not too long after I got the lights on, [a
man] knocked on the door. He was asking
the right questions about how long it had been on the market. We talked about loans and what he might
qualify for.”
The man,
later identified as Ernest Robert Chrisman, 43, toured the kitchen and living
room. Then he asked to see the rooms
upstairs. Hetzler said, “We got into the
master bedroom and he pulled a knife out and I could not believe it was
happening.”
In
addition to the knife, Chrisman had come armed with a can of bear spray tethered
to a rope. “He asked me to take off my
ring,” she said, “and get in the closet and at that point, his intentions were
deadly, in my opinion. I have a license
to conceal carry and I have the firearm and I drew my weapon. As I drew my firearm and he saw that I had
that, he doused me with bear spray. At
that point, I could…barely see. My skin
was burning, my eyes were on fire and so I fired.”
The gunshot
sent Chrisman running.
Five days
later, he was arrested. He had not been hit, merely frightened off by the gunfire.
On
January 10, 2020, Chrisman pleaded guilty to aggravated assault with a deadly
weapon. He was sentenced to 16 years in
prison.
“I want
to believe the best in people,” Hetzler said.
“I don’t want to think there are terrible people out there that want to
harm somebody and so [my] initial thought was disbelief, that this is not
happening. I don’t expect people coming
to look at homes to have bad intentions, but you prepare for any situation.”
For those
who are determined to ban firearms, what would you say to Dawna Hetzler?
Robert A.
Waters is co-author, with Sim Waters, of the new book, Guns and Self-Defense:23 Inspirational True Crime Stories of Survival with Firearms.