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By
Lindsey Bever September 10
Eighteen-year-old Malachi Heisler didn’t recognize the man when he pulled the trigger. Heisler only knew that the armed intruder dressed in
black tactical gear — including a ski mask and thigh holsters — was aiming a gun at his mother.
He fired.
Then he saw the man’s arm tattoos. This was his estranged father.
“He pointed it at my mother first, and then when I came out of the room he pointed it at me,” Heisler
told NBC affiliate WFLA. “So picture in your head, it was a standoff between me and him. He had his pistol and I had my rifle. It doesn’t matter a bullet is a bullet — one shot, you’re dead.”
Deputies said
Heisler shot and killed his father, 46-year-old John Heisler, early Tuesday morning after John Heisler attempted to break into their St. Petersburg, Fla., home and hold a gun on the teen’s mother and her boyfriend.
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John Heisler (Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office)
Corp. Spencer Gross, a police spokesman, said Malachi Heisler has not been arrested or charged with a crime and, although the case is still under investigation, it appears to be a justifiable homicide.
“I had a feeling that something like this would happen but I didn’t know when,” Malachi Heisler
told the news station about the shooting. “He wanted to scare us first, and then kill us while we were afraid.”
John Heisler was estranged from his son, daughter and their mother, Jolene Andrews, 37, and tension had been building for months, according to court records.
In April, police were called to the home. Malachi Heisler told police at the time that his mother and father had been arguing recently, and his father was in the process of moving out. He then told police that he felt “afraid” when his father was around.
During the dispute, deputies seized several guns, including an assault rifle, two shotguns and semiautomatic pistols, according to a police report. John Heisler, who was convicted for burglary in the late 1980s, was arrested and charged with illegal gun possession.
He was released on $10,000 bail, according to the
Associated Press.
Andrews quickly got a restraining order against him, records show.
“He wasn’t a good dad,” Malachi Heisler
told WFLA earlier this week.
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About midnight Tuesday,
deputies said, John Heisler crept onto the property and tried to break in through a front window. Andrews and her boyfriend, 47-year-old Alton Pyles, heard a “loud crash” and ran outside. They found a man clad in black,
armed with two BB guns.
Andrews and Pyles ran back inside and tried to slam the door,
deputies said, but John Heisler pushed past them. He then grabbed Andrews and tried to take her to the ground, deputies said.
Pyles called out for help.
“I heard the words ‘Malachi’ and ‘help,'”
Malachi Heisler told WFLA.
“Just by the sound of the person’s voice, it was distress,”
he told the Tampa Bay Times. “And I knew it wasn’t a joke.”
Malachi Heisler swung open his bedroom door and came face to face with the intruder.
The teen grabbed a rifle.
Deputies said John Heisler had a gun on Andrews and then turned to the teen.
Malachi Heisler pulled the trigger, hitting his father in the upper body, deputies said.
John Heisler was pronounced dead at the scene. No one else was injured.
“At first it felt like I made the wrong decision. That’s how they made me feel,” Malachi Heisler
told WFLA about the investigation. “At first it felt like I made the complete wrong decision, everybody was raised voices, K9 units, guns pointed at me.”
But,
he told the Tampa Bay Times, shooting his father was the right decision.
“If I didn’t,” he told the newspaper, “people would be dead, and more than one.”