Armed 13-Year-Old Confronts Intruder In His Valley Home Police Suggest Heading For Neighbor’S House Rather Than Grabbing Shotgun

As quietly as he could, 13-year-old Nick Burger climbed the basement stairs. It was dark upstairs, but Burger suspected an intruder was in his Spokane Valley home.

A Spokane County sheriff’s deputy later said it would have been wiser if Burger had quietly gone to a neighbor’s house and called for help last Friday night.

Instead, Burger said he went forward, through the dining room, living room and into the hall, carrying the 12-gauge shotgun he had just received as an early Christmas present.

The pump-action shotgun was loaded and the safety was off. Burger was about to confront a burglar two or three times his age, and deal with the stress of coming so close to pulling the trigger.

On Tuesday, Burger recounted the story. He had just come from a friend’s house and planned a quiet evening of watching ESPN “SportsCenter” in the basement. He is a sports fanatic, and plays basketball, baseball and football. He’s also completed hunter-safety courses.

The house was supposed to be empty. Burger’s parents were at a Christmas party downtown; his two sisters were at friends’ houses.

From the basement, he heard noises upstairs. But the family is used to hearing weird noises in its heating system.

A few minutes later, however, he heard an unmistakable sound - a slam, as if it took an extra heave to close something.

A drawer in his parents’ bedroom catches, and makes that sound.

That’s when he decided to check upstairs, stopping first at his basement bedroom for the shotgun he had only used to knock down two quail and a Hungarian partridge. He loaded it with two shells.

When he approached his parents’ room, Burger saw a beam from a flashlight bounce off a mirror and hit a wall. The intruder was rummaging through his parents’ closet, dressers and under their bed.

“Hey! Who are you?” he asked the intruder.

The burglar put up his hands. He started walking toward Burger confidently.

Finger on the trigger, Burger backed up until they faced each other in the dining room. They were so close, the seventh-grader could see the brown in the intruder’s eyes - even in the shadows.

The man, who had a crowbar hanging at his side, claimed he was a policeman. He asked Burger to let him reach into his pocket for his identification.

Burger warned the man to keep his hands up and leave immediately. The intruder agreed.

Burger kept his aim until the man was out of sight.

From the street, the man yelled to the frightened teen.

“The cops are on their way,” said the man, as if he really was an officer and the boy might be in big trouble.

Burger ran to a phone and called his parents. The teen was so hysterical, his father Frank didn’t recognize his son’s voice.

With Burger in the kitchen, gun by his side, his parents rushed home. But they had to wait to call police.

“He was so scared, he wouldn’t let (his mom) hang up the phone,” Frank Burger said.

The man, who entered by breaking a window in a side door, made off with some jewelry and rare coins. Burger’s parents aren’t concerned about those losses.

Greg Snyder, Spokane County sheriff’s crime prevention deputy, advises against confronting home invaders. It’s better to make noise to let the burglar know someone is home, Snyder said.

“Nine times out of 10, they’re going to high-tail it out of there,” he said.

Even better, if there’s an easy exit, Snyder advises leaving the home and phoning police from a neighbor’s house. Confronting the burglar with a gun needlessly escalates the danger.

“You just brought a deadly weapon into a deadly situation,” Snyder said.

Burger said that if he had it to do over, he would have reacted differently.

“I probably would have ran out the door to one of my neighbors’ houses,” he said. “I wake up three or four times a night just seeing the (intruder).”

Burger said he didn’t call for help because he wasn’t sure if he was hearing things, and he didn’t want to cry wolf.

Burger’s family calls him a hero, but tells him he shouldn’t have taken such a chance.

The family shudders to think how their lives would have changed if the teen had pulled the trigger or the intruder had wrestled the gun away.

“It’s been pretty traumatic,” Frank Burger said. “I thank the Lord for watching over my son because who knows what could have happened.”

Burger described the invader as a white male, about 6 feet and 180 pounds. He had brown, graying hair and a small mustache.

Anyone with information is asked to call Crime Check at (509) 456-2233.