Fed-Up 85-Year-Old Uses His Shotgun : Santa Ana Resident Kills Man in Yard; Self-Defense Probable, Police Say

An 85-year old Santa Ana man who repeatedly complained to police that vagrants and drug addicts were living in a trailer in his back yard, picked up a shotgun Monday and marched outside to confront them. When one of the inhabitants lunged at him, he shot him dead, police said.

Police confiscated a 20-gauge shotgun belonging to Ferris H. Scott, owner of the home in the 1300 block of North Broadway, but declined to arrest him while their investigation continues.

“All indications are at this point that he acted in self-defense,” said police spokesman Robert Helton. “He has been victimized on numerous times in the past month . . . and one of the men who had victimized him is apparently the one who is dead.”

Helton said the vagrant apparently lunged at Scott when confronted at about 7 a.m. The victim, who has not yet been identified, died of a single blast to the chest. Police are looking for a young woman who witnessed the shooting but ran away.

“Nobody likes to take a life, me included,” Scott said, making his way through the clutter of the main house that he said has been vandalized eight times in the last two months. “But the story of the Old West is that if nobody else protects you, you have to protect yourself.”

According to police records, Scott, a retired Lathrop Junior High School football coach, was first victimized in early July when he arrived home from a vacation in Palm Springs. He told police that the house had been vandalized and that a large safe with several thousand dollars in cash and travelers’s checks had been ripped from the wall.

Scott called police and moved to another house he owns in Santa Ana. But several days later, when he returned to check on the North Broadway house, he found two men--one of them the man he allegedly killed on Monday--inhabiting the house.

“They were sitting right there on my bed eating ice cream and corn,” said Scott. “But when I came in the room, they went right out the window and one even left his shoes.”

Scott said he spent $4,000 on a burglar alarm that was installed in various stages during the next few weeks. But thieves found ways to circumvent the alarm and eventually stole two fur coats, three televisions and a microwave oven, he said.

Police records show that Scott reported at least four burglaries during July and early August. And Scott displayed records from a burglar alarm company, Westec Security Inc. of Irvine, that indicate his alarm went off five times from Aug. 5 to 8.

A neighbor, who would give his name only as Patrick, remembers seeing a group, including a man who met the description of the victim, walking around the neighborhood acting as if they were selling drugs.

“They were always around, just like Mr. Scott described them, passing things back and forth,” said Patrick. “It’s gotten so bad lately that I’m afraid to walk from my house to the Alpha Beta at night.”

Scott said that as the problem worsened, police paid less attention to his calls.

“I’ve tried to call police numerous times, and they always act like they have another appointment to go to,” Scott said. “One Friday night I called and waited 1 1/2 hours before they came and parked on the other side of the street and just waited there.”

Police dispute Scott’s claim, saying they staked out his house three times trying to catch burglars. Fourteen men were involved in the surveillance, Helton said.

But for Scott, it wasn’t enough. “I felt like I had to do something,” he said.

Several days ago, he called police to complain that vagrants were now living in the trailer behind the house.

“They had been living in there about a week,” Scott said. “Several times I came home and found them . . . and even though I tried to bluff them away, they wouldn’t leave.”

He said he nailed the door of the trailer shut six times, and even backed his Jeep Wagoneer against the door so that it couldn’t be opened, but the trespassers still managed to enter.

“On Sunday I called police and told them there were people living in the trailer, but it took (police) an hour to get here,” Scott said. “By that time they had left, so I told them that if they weren’t going to protect my wife and I, then I was going to have to protect myself.”

“I told (the police) I had a shotgun and was prepared to shoot,” he said. The police, Scott said, paid no attention to his threat and left the house.

On Monday morning, Scott said, he arrived early at the North Broadway house, picked up a shotgun he said was purchased several months ago for hunting, and walked out to the trailer.

“I knew they were in there so I knocked on the door with the shotgun,” Scott said. “Then the woman came to the door, and I told her that it was my trailer and she was going to have to leave.”

Then, Scott said, a tall man with curly hair came out of the trailer from behind the woman looking “glassy-eyed.”

“He passed her and came out after me, after my gun, with his hands about this high,” Scott said, holding his hands just above his waist. “So I shot him in the chest.

“The girl reached down to help him and then ran off.”

When police arrived about 7:30, they found the man dead in a pool of blood next to the trailer door. Inside were a half bottle of rum, a pornographic magazine, dozens of burnt matches and several spoons coated with a white residue that appeared to be crack cocaine.

“It’s gotten to the point where every time you go out to the trash you don’t know who’s going to be sleeping there,” said Bob Riesgo, a neighbor. “He’s 85 years old and that was a really big guy. . . . I think he did right.”