This is the story of Sammie Foust, a 49 year-old woman from Cape Coral, Florida. I’ve shared it more than once in my CPL classes. T. Webb posted a very good account of it on the Long Island Firearms site on 4/6/13. Tanya Metaksa, who is retired from serving as Executive Director of the NRA Institute for Legislative Action, wrote a book titled, “Safe, Not Sorry: Keeping Yourself and Your Family Safe in a Violent Age”. She interviewed Foust and includes it in her book. Each of these accounts shares some unique details, so this post is largely an amalgamation of them.
On Friday, May 10, 1996, Sammi Foust, a 49-year-old slightly-built woman, was lying on her bed watching morning TV. She had spent the previous two days cleaning out drawers, and things were strewn all over the room. The bed where she lay was piled with bags of old clothing she had decided to give away, along with old purses and boxes of odds and ends. While cleaning out a drawer the previous evening she had come across a small handgun. It was a tiny .25 Auto that a friend had given her long ago for protection. She knew she had it, but had forgotten where she had put it. Her father had told her it was too small, and that she should get a “bigger gun”. Four cartridges were lying next to it. She decided she would try to load the gun, just in case she would ever need it. She put the cartridges into the magazine. Four cartridges were all that it could hold. She inserted it into the gun and cycled the slide. The first round went into the chamber, and everything seemed to be working. She put the safety on, set the little gun on a stand next to the bed, and thought no more about it.
At 6:23 AM she heard some window blinds rattle in the living room and assumed it was her cat returning. But it wasn’t. It was James Wayne Horne, a prison inmate who had been released only a few weeks before. Though it was his third prison term, he had only served just over a year on a 10-year sentence for aggravated assault.
The robber-assailant rushed into the bedroom. He was wearing a stocking mask, dark clothes, and socks pulled over his hands. Before Sammi could react, he had one hand over her mouth, with the other holding a box cutter to her throat. He demanded money. Foust offered him her purse, which he dumped on the bed, finding $400 in bills. He then demanded Foust tell him the location of her jewelry box, which she did. But the man was upset with the cheap quality of the costume jewelry, and returned to demand “her diamonds,” viciously slashing her with a knife and beating her about the face. The first punch hit her squarely in the eye with terrific force. He said, “You know I’m going to kill you, so you might as well give it up. Die easy or die hard, bitch.”
Foust directed the man to a second credenza. She knew it contained only more costume jewelry, but she needed space and time. The little .25 was still sitting there, and in plain view. She was amazed that he hadn’t seen it. When he turned toward the credenza, she went for the gun. Sammie had only a couple of seconds to pick it up and figure out what to do with it. The last time Sammi had fired a gun was when she was 14 years old, and she had never fired a handgun in her life. Miraculously, she had the presence of mind to flick the safety off. When he turned back toward her, she was ready.
She pointed the gun at him and pulled the trigger. It sounded like a little cap pistol. There was no recoil, no blood. She figured the gun had misfired. She shot a second time. In her interview she stated, “That one got him in the chest and the coroner said it was the one that ultimately killed him. At the time, it didn’t even slow him down. He slugged me again and grabbed hold of me. All I could think about was ‘Dear God, don’t let me pass out,’ and ‘Don’t let go of that gun.’ I have never gripped anything so tightly in my life. As strong as he was, he couldn’t get the gun out of my hand. We were fighting breast to breast, so the gun was between us.” Sammie fired yet again, hitting him in the abdomen. “He continued to fight, if anything he fought harder, and that’s when we fell back through the dining room doorway to the master bedroom. We were still breast to breast. He was slamming me into walls and tables, beating me in the head, doing pretty much what he wanted except getting the gun away, and I managed to get off one more shot. That one was at a down angle and ended up in his groin.”
Horne pounded and slashed at her face with his knife until one eyeball was hanging out of its socket. But he did not get the gun. Sammie fell, and the hulking attacker landed on top of her and began to strangle her. She said, “He weighed almost 200 lbs., and I was pinned down. There was just nowhere to go, and I thought it was over for me. He’s choking me, I can feel I’m about to lose it, I don’t know what to do, and I think I’m going to die. I’m not very religious, but in my mind I started to pray. I asked God to forgive me; I even asked him to forgive the son of a bitch who was killing me, and I prepared to die. Then, at that very moment, he puked blood all over me and died.”
James Wayne Horne died at 36, with a record for prior burglaries, and a toxicology screen with so many drugs it raised the eyebrows of even seasoned investigators. Police found James Wayne Horne where she had left him. The medical examiner concluded the first shot had entered his mouth, the second his heart, the third and fourth bullets his abdomen and groin. He had taken nearly an hour to bleed to death.
When the police arrived, they found tables knocked over, chairs broken, dishes shattered, the walls and floors smeared with blood. Foust recalled “A policeman came back and knelt down on the driveway. He tried to pry my fingers from the gun. And he started crying and said ‘I’m gonna break your fingers. I can’t get them loose.’ But I couldn’t let go of the handle. My knuckles were swollen up, I was holding it so tight. The grip I had on that gun was what kept my attacker from getting it from me. Even as big a man as he was, he couldn’t take it away.”
Sammie noticed the police and ambulance personnel wincing whenever they looked at her, cursing her attacker under their breath. When she finally found a mirror, she realized why. Her eye was surgically reattached that day. He had knocked out four of her teeth, which she swallowed. The bones in her gums were crushed, and her left cheekbone was fractured. Her nose was broken, and her larynx fractured. She suffers from permanently impaired vision, a permanent throat injury, and severe dental damage. She has since run out of funds to pay for psychiatric counseling, or for the proper repair of her gums and teeth. To this day, she eats only soft food.
She would later say, “I am very, very regretful that someone had to die, but I’m equally glad it wasn’t me. That was the choice I had to make. I made it and I chose to live.” Yes, Sammie Foust survived, but at a horrific cost.