A Shovelful of Courage Scares Away a Gunman

When his wife encountered the burglar creeping down the staircase in their home with a gun in his hand, Edwin Butcher knew what to do. He picked up a shovel.

“I don’t know if it was stupidity,” Butcher said Sunday, the day after the burglar fired three shots at him before escaping empty-handed from the family’s Costa Mesa home in the 800 block of Peace Place. “Usually there is nothing you can do, (you are) helpless. In this case, I could see he was scared; there was something I could do.”

Butcher, a 44-year-old Westminster pharmacist, said he had been held up at gunpoint at work years before. But about 8 p.m. Saturday, when his wife ran out of the house yelling, “He’s robbing us,” Butcher decided he wasn’t going to take it anymore.

Luckily, no one was hurt in the incident, according to Costa Mesa police. Unluckily, the burglar got away.

Stephanie Butcher, 44, said Sunday that when she saw the dark figure in her house, she raced out to the garage, where her husband and their two children were piling out of the car after a dinner out. “I let out a tremendous scream,” she recalled.

Ushering the children--ages 7 and 9--out to the front yard, she saw the burglar rushing out of the house, she said. She hit the dirt along with her kids as a shot rang out.

Edwin Butcher, shovel in hand, took off after the fleeing bandit, who fired again.

While his wife called police, Butcher chased the man down an adjoining street and trapped him in some bushes.

“I knew he was in (the shrubs), but I wasn’t going there because he might shoot at me,” he recalled.

While Butcher kept a vigil, he tried to enlist help. A neighbor refused to pull his car up to the bushes and shine the headlights for fear of being shot, but after about five minutes he did offer Butcher a flashlight.

Armed with the flashlight and shovel, Butcher hollered at the burglar to come out and surrender to police.

The suspect peeped cautiously over the bushes and walked out slowly, gun in hand, Butcher said, until it became apparent there were no police around.

“He ran away and fired a third shot,” said Butcher, who took off after the man again.

About four houses up the street, the suspect jumped a fence behind a house. The panting and perspiring Butcher decided to wait for police. “Well, I waited and waited,” Butcher said, before knocking at the front door to tell the residents, “You have an armed guy in your backyard.”

Meanwhile, police had set up a perimeter about a block away to keep residents away from the reported gunfire. But the burglar somehow managed to elude them.

Costa Mesa Police Lt. David Brooks, who was still amazed by the chase, said Sunday of Butcher, “I can believe being that mad, but I can’t believe being that, well . . . whatever.”

But Butcher’s wife wasn’t at all surprised. “When he gets upset and mad and feels something is just not right, he lets you know,” she said. “I called him my hero.”