On Saturday 18-year-old Freddy Velasquez broke into a house in Utah and got into a hostage situation with police when he took 99-year-old Doris Wasden hostage.
But what Velasquez didn’t realize was he messed with the wrong 99-year-old grandmother.
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According to KSL, Velasquez broke into the house of Jim Gabbard and his fiance CJ Montoya around 1:45 a.m armed with a gun. Wasden, Montoya’s grandmother, was staying with the couple as they were getting ready to celebrate her 100th birthday the following week.
Velasquez wound up pointing a gun at Gabbard. When police arrived they were able to get Gabbard and Montoya out of the house, but the standoff began when Velasquez realized he had a hostage in a now-awake Wasden.
Wasden simply told Velasquez it was time to stop fooling around with the standoff and give himself over to the police.
“He was rifling through the drawers, making a mess, spilling things all over and she has her 100th birthday party one week from today,” Gabbard said in an interview with KSL. “And her words to him were, ‘I just had this house cleaned for my party and you are messing it up. You better knock it off.’”
“He was just scared I guess, and he grabbed me by my hands, and then I just sit on the floor on my bum so I didn’t get hurt,” Wasden said. “And I just got back in bed and he come in again and then he started to talk to me. And I said ‘I can’t hear you, I can’t hear you.’ And then he realized I was a very old woman, so he was pretty nice to me after that.”
Wasden’s scolding actually worked, as Velasquez ended up calming down and giving Wasden over to the police around 3 a.m. He gave himself up a little over two hours after that.
Gabbard said after the incident that he wasn’t surprised by Wasden’s fearlessness in the face of a intruder with a gun.
“Grandma’s disposition is what she’s taught us: that you can’t have animosity and you can’t be angry with the young man,” Gabbard said. “He made a mistake and we don’t hold resentment, and we just hope that he gets some help and hope that his family is okay.”
Velasquez is now facing charges of aggravated assault, burglary, kidnapping, robbery and discharge of a firearm.
