Couple Use Tire Iron, Shovel to Subdue Intruder Firing AK-47

A suspected robber, fleeing a gun battle with police, burst into a Palmdale couple’s backyard wearing a military outfit and firing an AK-47.

“He told me I was going with him,” said Ja’Nice Wolfe. “I told him, ‘The hell I am.’ ”

Then, in a hand-to-hand fight, her boyfriend Thomas Thrun whacked the gunman with a tire iron and Wolfe polished him off with shovel blows to the neck and head.

The suspect, identified by police as Mario Barraillier, 38, of Palmdale was in Antelope Valley Hospital in critical condition Monday, held on suspicion of robbery and suspicion of attempted murder of a peace officer.

He had been stopped on suspicion of shoplifting at a local Kmart when he opened fire on store guards, sheriff’s deputies said. After a gun battle with CHP officers on the Antelope Valley Freeway, he turned onto Sierra Highway and entered Sierra Village Mobile Home Park, where he encountered Thrum and Wolfe, who fly a Confederate flag and a skull-and-crossbones pirate banner from their mobile home.

“I didn’t want to kill anyone but he was pointing the gun at my future husband,” Wolfe said.

“There was no time to stand there and be stupid. If we didn’t do anything, I’d be lying dead in the desert right now.”