82-year-old man fights off home intruder

FORT MYERS, Fla. (WBBH) - An 82-year-old man fought off a home intruder in Florida. He said he had no fear and only acted on instinct.

“Every time I’d hit him, he’d hit me, on and on and on, this is just what he did,” Ronald Lucas said.

Lucas said he’s never been afraid of a fight.

“I’ve been like this all my life,” he said. “I fight for everybody. I don’t care who it is, you or him.”

Lucas, 82, says someone entered his home Tuesday.

“As soon as I saw it, my wife had an operation, so I knew I had to get to her,” he said.

He said he faced the intruder head on.

“I just got in between them, and boy that was it,” he said. “That’s when I started taking him out. I had to do it. He knows how to fight. That guy took on a Special Forces guy in Vietnam and -- low and behold boy, every time I made a move, he knew what I was going to do before I did it.”

He said he eventually got them outside.

“I hit him so hard he fell all the way down the steps and hit the rocks,” Lucas said. “That’s when I came at him with the cane again. I kept fighting him all the way up to that highway up there.

“And finally, another guy comes along and says, ‘You better leave that old man alone!’ And I said, ‘Well it’s too late. I’ve already beat the tar out of him.’”

Lucas has bruises all over his arms, but he protected his wife and his home. He says he will do it again if needed.

“He might hold a grudge if he gets out,” Lucas said. “But if he does, he comes looking for it, he’s going to find it.”

The sheriff’s office says they did identify the intruder with help from Lucas, and they are filing charges with the state attorney’s office.

Copyright 2023 WBBH via CNN Newsource. All rights reserved.