Shaquita Green: Georgia Mom Fatally Shoots Alleged Gang Member, Saves Her Family’s Life
Shaquita Green, a Georgia woman and mother of three, claims to have shot a gang member dead when he tried to break into their home early Thursday morning.
According to a report from WSB-TV Channel 2, the incident took place at 2:30 a.m. on Thursday, when a woman, later identified as Green, called 911 to report that someone had tried to break into her house and that she had shot and killed the man. Green wasn’t able to identify the person who had supposedly broken in, but she admitted that the man was armed and that he had threatened to kill her three children.
“It was either him or me and I wasn’t going,” Shaquita Green explained to the Atlanta, Georgia, news outlet.
“My kids weren’t going to get hurt and they weren’t going to see me get hurt.”
Green added that the intruder, who was later identified by police as 27-year-old Keandre Funches, had repeatedly demanded to see her husband, who was not home at the time. As he was doing that, he allegedly forced the Green family to the back of the house and made threats against the children’s lives.
“That’s when I stepped in front of them and said, ‘You don’t have to do all of that.'”
Definition of a hero: A young mother opens fire to protect her children from home invasion suspect #ArmedCitizen #2A https://t.co/hQgLb5UDub
— NRA (@NRA) August 3, 2017
Shaquita Green was somehow able to grab her gun and fire at Funches, shooting him and saving her family’s lives. Police arrived at the scene to find Funches dead and proceeded to speak with the Green family’s neighbors. That’s where the story took an unlikely twist, according to a separate report from the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
Based on witness accounts and police statements, the incident may have been a gang-related shooting and not a home invasion as Shaquita Green had claimed. The Georgia woman reportedly let another man, Javarian Mitchell, inside her home, after which Mitchell let Funches in. Funches would then demand to see Shaquita’s husband, William Green.
According to Marietta police officer Chuck McPhilamy, Mitchell and Shaquita knew each other, though it’s not sure how the two had gotten acquainted. Keandre Funches, the man fatally shot by Green, had “several run-ins” with Marietta police and had allegedly pointed his gun at an officer in a 2015 incident, the AJC added.
Although Javarian Mitchell was not the gunman in Thursday’s alleged gang-related incident, Marietta police have charged him with murder. This is in accordance with Georgia law, where people can be charged with murder if they committed a crime resulting in a person’s death. The AJC noted that Mitchell is also facing charges of aggravated assault with a firearm, false imprisonment, and third-degree cruelty to children.
Meanwhile, Shaquita Green has yet to be charged by authorities with any crime. And as quoted by the HuffPost, the Georgia mom is thankful that things had turned out as they had on that Thursday morning, despite her claim of having killed a man in self-defense.
“I thank God it played out the way it did. I hate that someone had to lose their life, but he shouldn’t have come and brought his a** in my house, excuse my language.”
[Featured Image by Prath/Shutterstock]
