911 Outage Forces Mom to Face Off With Home Intruder: 'I Grabbed a Knife…and Went Toward Him\

Second Amendment advocates will likely cite this story next time they are entrenched in a debate over the legitimacy of using firearms as a means for self-defense.

A Washington state woman told the Huffington Post a 911 outage left her helpless and that she was forced to fend for herself when a man broke into her home late last week. She said 37 calls made to 911 proved unsuccessful.

Alicia Cappola of Everett explained that the incident began when she heard "aggressive knocking" on her door at about 1:45 in the morning.

"I kind of went into the kitchen and got my cellphone to call 911 and it rang busy," she recounted to the Huffington Post. "I thought I had done something wrong because 911 is never busy and you know, tried it a couple more times."

After failing to get through, Cappola went to the front door where she observed the man.

[sharequote align="center"]"[I] looked out of the glass on the front door and there was a guy out there trying to get in..."[/sharequote]

"[I] looked out of the glass on the front door and there was a guy out there trying to get in and he was yelling for me to let him and and of course I didn't," she said.

"He stopped banging on the door after about 10 minutes and ripped a screen off a window on my front porch and unfortunately the window was unlocked," she continued. "[T]hen he came through the window I grabbed a knife in my kitchen and went toward him and told him to get out."

According to Cappola, the man appeared under the influence of either drugs or alcohol, so she was ultimately "able to convince him he didn't belong there."

The woman was able to eventually get through to 911. Officers finally arrived about an hour later.

The seven-hour outage to Washington state's 911 was caused by an issue with third-party vendor CenturyLink.

(H/T: WLWT)

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