Makes early call; shot at

This story was published by The Ypsilanti Daily Press on Saturday, June 26, 1909.

“John, just as sure as your born, there’s a burglar in this house. John, I say, john, wake up, john, HELP JOHN, Wake UP.”

The above with a staccato accompaniment upon the ribs awakened “John,” who is known on Second Avenue, as John Perry.

Cautiously looking out of the bedroom window, or as he told Justice Gunn this morning, “it pays to be cautious, when you’re monkeying with death,” he saw the figure of a man entering the rear bedroom.

He lighted a lamp and hastened to that room. The man had one leg and his head through the window when John appeared on the scene.

In anything but polite tones, John asked the intruder his business. He shoved the lamp toward the uninvited visitor’s face. Startled by the appearance of the occupant of the house, the intruder started back the way he came, but slipped and slid down two tin roofs, falling fifteen feet to the ground.

Perry pursued the burglar, and fired one shot at him as he disappeared down First Avenue. Upon his return to the house he found his wife in “a state of hysterics” and to reassure her, loaded a 16-gage double barreled shot gun to the muzzle and waited for daylight. He declares he knows who the intruder is, and a warrant was issued for the man this morning.

Perry said the reason for the man’s appearance at such an unconventional hour, was that he expected several hundred dollars life insurance within a few days.