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BLUE MOUND -- Grappling over a shotgun with a 300-pound man who had just burst into his home and threatened his wife, Keith Hoehn had but one thought.
"It was like a horror movie," he said. "I thought I was a dead man. We're fighting for our lives."The overnight crime spree began late Tuesday when two suspects robbed a family in north Fort Worth and then drove the family's van to Blue Mound where they tried to do the same thing at the Globe Street home of Keith and Kellie Hoehn."Very overt, very crazy" is how Blue Mound Police Lt. Thomas Cain described the fracas. The Hoehns, both 34, feared that they and their children were about to be killed, so they battled the suspects.Keith Hoehn struggled to get the sawed-off shotgun, while his wife grabbed the muzzle, trying to keep it pointed away from the rooms of the couple's son, 12, and 5-year-old daughter. That went on for about five minutes, Keith Hoehn said.He finally managed to get the shotgun away from the larger of the two attackers and turned it on both of them.Dakota Scott Benoit, 20, of Richland Hills was fatally wounded and John Garland Pierson, 25, of Haltom City was in critical condition and police custody at the hospital.Keith Hoehn, a subcontractor who works with water filtration systems, stood on his blood-sprinkled porch Wednesday and wearily retold his story to a steady stream of journalists. His knuckles were scraped raw and his back and legs were marked by cuts and bruises. Kellie Hoehn preferred to let her husband do most of the talking."We have been crying for hours, wondering how we even survived," Keith Hoehn said. "How could I have fought off a 300-pound man? When he got shot he kept coming. I got to figure he wasn't sober."'SNATCH AND GRAB AND GO'Public records show that Benoit and Pierson both have extensive criminal histories. The Blue Mound incident was the second home invasion they tried to pull off late Tuesday and early Wednesday, investigators said.The first one was reported at 11:11 p.m. on Calico Rock Drive in Fort Worth, about a mile east of the home in Blue Mound, according to police reports.Cain and Lt. Paul Henderson, Fort Worth police spokesman, said they didn't know how the robbers chose which houses to hit.Keith Hoehn said he didn't know the robbers or why they targeted his home.Perhaps, Cain said, they were "crimes of opportunity.""Just snatch and grab and go," he said.In the first incident, the gun-wielding men entered the home on Calico Rock Drive through an open garage door and went to a bedroom where they confronted the 38-year-old homeowner and his wife, Henderson said.They demanded valuables, Henderson said.The homeowner, Henderson said, is a participant in the police department's Code Blue crime watch program, and the gunmen took his police radio.They also got a laptop, a wallet, a jewelry box, and the family's van -- a red Honda Odyssey, Henderson said."Children were inside the house asleep and were not harmed," Henderson said. "There were no reported injuries during this robbery."
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