Firearms Owners Against Crime
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
WICHITA FALLS, Texas (TNN) - On the evening of April 22nd, a woman looked outside her window and noticed a man in nothing but his underwear in her pool.
The man was Matthew Reyes, who just moments before had escaped from the North Texas State Hospital.
A janitor working at the hospital and left his keys out, allowing for Reyes to escape, travel through the thick brush behind the hospital where he came upon the home.
“So they didn’t know him at all never seen him before. We’re to believe he found this random house with a swimming pool and got in the swimming pool,” said Wichita County Sheriff David Duke.
The woman called her husband before calling 911. By that point, Reyes had noticed the woman and began trying to break into the house. By the time the husband got home...
“He got back up again, and came at the homeowner and the homeowner fired one shot with a shotgun, hitting the guy in the right knee/upper leg, and breaking his femur,” said Duke.
Reyes is now at a hospital in Fort Worth, while the Wichita County sheriff’s office works to present this case to the district attorney’s office. The homeowner’s case will then be heard before a grand jury to decide if he was acting in self-defense, something Sheriff Duke believes is evident.
“You can’t predict what he's going to do, and if somebody’s got a firearm and there’s somebody coming at him and he’s protecting himself, there’s not a lot that can be disproved from that,” added Duke.
Reyes is facing a misdemeanor criminal trespass charge, but since his time at the North Texas State Hospital was ordered by a Denton County judge that same judge would have to release him before Reyes would serve any time in the Wichita County jail.
The homeowner was not arrested.