By Robert A. Waters
The weather in Overbrook, Kansas was mild on October 8, 2015, in the 40s that night. Shortly after midnight, Ashley Mundy lay asleep in her bedroom when she heard glass breaking. She later testified in court, saying, "Oh my gosh. There's someone in my house. Like, I could hear shuffling in the basement. I sat up listening. Then I jumped up and grabbed my phone and my gun."
Her four-year-old son, Braedyn, lay sleeping on the bed next to her.
Mundy owned a 9mm semiautomatic pistol. She loaded it and "went down the hallway to see if I could see anything. I got my gun ready to shoot and then saw a stranger walking from the dining room to the living room."
At first, he had his back to her and was fumbling with her home security system. She said she thought he was trying to disable it.
Then, about four feet away, he turned toward her. As soon as she saw his face, she fired. She knew she had hit him. "When I shot...blood's going everywhere [and] he threw his hands in the air," she testified. She yelled at the stranger to leave and "he ran screaming through my house. Once he was out of the house, I secured the door and called 9-1-1."
As Ashley waited, police and paramedics arrived. Overbrook Police chief Terry Hollingsworth testified that he "saw a male subject laying in the road and EMS was working on him." The wounded man, whom the chief recognized as Bruce Jolly (pictured), a forty-nine-year-old frequent visitor to the local courts, had wounds to his left wrist and abdomen.
Jolly lived near Mundy, and police quickly obtained a search warrant for his home. Officers testified that they found large quantities of blood in the residence. "The safe had blood all over it," Investigator Bryan Johnson told the court. A bloody knife was also found in the safe.
The Osage County News reported that "Johnson testified that Mundy had told him the intruder was holding a red object when he was at her house and had a handled object his his waistband. The investigator said he collected a machete from Jolly's home, which matched the victim's description of the object in his waistband. He said a weed-eater that matched the description of Mundy's was also recovered from the Jolly's garage."
Investigators learned that Jolly had run home after being shot and attempted to hide the objects he was carrying. Then he ran out to the street and called for assistance.
Jolly was tried a year later and sentenced to four years and nine months in the state prison.
Before breaking into Mundy's home, he'd had numerous convictions for offenses such as aggravated burglary, narcotics possession, criminal possession of a firearm, criminal use of a financial card, 11 convictions for vehicle burglary, and others.
"I was there alone with my child," Ashley said. "My dad encouraged me to get a conceal and carry, and I just felt that was the right thing to do at that moment."
"[Jolly] had meth in his system," Ashley said. "At the time, everyone was like, how did he survive that? I think, at the time, the drugs were what allowed him to survive the shot because [the bullet] was a hollow tip."
Ashley said, "I think when something like this happens, you think the worst. I worry about Braedyn every day and with that situation, I can't imagine what he could have witnessed."
Ashley, who felt unable to continue living in her home, packed up and moved to a new place.
