An 87-year-old East St. Louis woman fatally shot a man early this morning as he was trying to break into her house.

Police said they found the man, Larry D. Tillman, 49, of East St. Louis on the enclosed front porch of the woman’s house in the 2100 block of Gaty Avenue. He had pulled the telephone wires from the side of the house, then removed security bars from a porch window.

As the man was breaking through a storm door that leads into the house itself, the woman fired several shots through her front door, striking Tillman once in the chest.

Police said the shots were fired from a pistol, most likely a gun that her daughter had given her after a man broke into the elderly woman’s house in December, battered her and stole some items.
The man may have been dead for as long as four hours before police arrived. Police said that the woman was not sure that she had hit Tillman when she fired the shots about 2 a.m. However, she was too afraid to go outside to check and could not call for help because the telephone lines were dead.

When the woman’s daughter arrived about 6 a.m. to bring her mother breakfast, she found the dead man on the porch, police said.

Illinois State Police Master Sgt. Jim Morrisey said evidence taken from the December home invasion would be compared to the break-in today to see if Tillman was responsible for both crimes.