ROSWELL, N.M. (KRQE) - Sheriff's deputies said a gunshot victim wasn't really a victim after all.

In fact, they said he's quite the opposite. According to investigators, the man who pulled the trigger was an 87-year-old hero.

Investigators believe the gunshot victim was in the process of chasing down and attacking a woman when the shooting happened.

The incident happened Sunday at a property in north Roswell in the 6100 block of Old Clovis Highway. A woman was doing laundry when she claims her neighbor, Larrell Stell, 49, took off his shirt and started talking.

"She reports being accosted by a male resident there," said Lt. Britt Snyder of the Chaves County Sheriff's Department. "He made sexual advances towards her, and she rebuffed that. He got upset and pushed her down,"

The woman, 24 and pregnant, said she took her 3-year-old daughter and ran to her landlord's house next door. She told deputies Stell barged his way inside, pushed her down and punched her face repeatedly.

http://www.krqe.com/dpp/news/crime/a...ves-woman-cops