Intruders Were Ready for Dog but Forgot to Beware of Owner

When two masked intruders approached Craig Tantalo’s hillside home in San Juan Capistrano early Friday morning, they should have read the sign in the front window: “Never Mind the Dog: Beware of Owner.”

The dog was bad enough: a 135-pound, 4-year-old King Doberman pinscher named Gunner. But with their arms wrapped in towels and tape, the masked men figured they could fend off the dog.

Tantalo, who still is not sure why he answered the doorbell about 2 a.m.--”Normally I wouldn’t do that,” he said--proved to be more than the assailants could handle, however.

As he was being shoved back into the foyer with a pistol in his face by one of the men, Tantalo said, he reached back onto the staircase for a 9-millimeter pistol that he had forgotten to put away the night before, disarmed the man and shot him in the groin.

When sheriff’s deputies arrived, the intruder, identified as James Feldon Arnold, 22, of San Clemente, was lying on the floor with Tantalo holding his gun on him.

Arnold in Jail Ward

Arnold was taken to Mission Community Hospital in Mission Viejo, where he was listed in stable condition, and then transferred to the jail ward at UCI Medical Center, Sheriff’s Lt. Dick Olson said. He will be charged with armed robbery and burglary, Olson said.

Tantalo said the second man, who had been struggling with Gunner and had suggested to his partner that he shoot the dog, fled when he heard the gunshot.

The second intruder is about 5 feet, 9 inches tall and weighs about 150 pounds, Olson said.

Tantalo, 29, said he usually keeps his gun upstairs but “forgot to put it away--thank God. We were going to go out to the range and shoot, and I had left the 9-millimeter in the case on the stairs.”

Tantalo is a laser technology specialist for a company that designs high-tech surveillance systems. He said there was “not necessarily” anything in his background that prepared him to fight off intruders. He dismissed his own lack of a home security system as an example of “plumbers having the worst plumbing.”

“I have a bad temper, and I guess I got lucky,” Tantalo said. “I wouldn’t recommend that other people try to tackle anything like that.”