67-year-old Michigan man fatally injured during break-in at ex-girlfriend’s home

ORION TOWNSHIP, Mich. (CBS DETROIT) – According to police, a man broke into a home in Orion Township on Wednesday morning to attack his ex-girlfriend and was shot by the woman’s stepson.

It happened shortly after 10 a.m. at a home on Elkhorn Lake Road in Orion Township.

Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard said the 62-year-old woman had previously lived with the suspect, 67-year-old Galen Gavitt, in another county for 17 years.

Authorities said she obtained a restraining order against him after he allegedly made threats to kill her.

Police said she sought refuge at her stepdaughter’s home in Orion Township. Gavitt traveled there Wednesday morning, they said.

Bouchard said Gavitt broke into the home through a basement window with an axe and that the woman and her stepson then barricaded themselves in an upstairs bedroom and leaned on the door to keep Gavitt out.

At that moment, it is said, he fired a revolver through the door and narrowly missed his stepson, who took cover.

This gave Gavitt access to the bedroom, where he pointed his gun at his stepson and implied that he was only in the house because of his ex-girlfriend.

At that moment, Bouchard said, the stepson fired his own gun at Gavitt, killing him.

“It’s always a terrible situation when human lives are lost,” Bouchard said. “But … the person who came there to commit violence was, thank God, the only one who was injured and, in this case, killed by the violence they were trying to commit.”

He said there were no other injuries.

Bouchard added that Gavitt’s guns were taken away after the protection order was issued due to recently enacted red flag laws, but they believe he managed to get the revolver from his ex-wife before traveling to Orion Township.

“There’s never a good outcome,” Bouchard said. “But there’s a better outcome than three dead at that point, because often you see they kill everyone there and then kill themselves. So we’ve all seen countless murder-suicides, and it wouldn’t surprise me at all if that was what he had in mind.”

The investigation is ongoing.