{"id":4354,"date":"2011-07-17T21:48:26","date_gmt":"2011-07-18T01:48:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/?p=4354"},"modified":"2011-07-17T21:45:34","modified_gmt":"2011-07-18T01:45:34","slug":"feisty-77-year-old-congressman-fights-off-armed-intruder-at-his-iowa-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/07\/feisty-77-year-old-congressman-fights-off-armed-intruder-at-his-iowa-home","title":{"rendered":"Feisty 77-year-old Congressman fights off armed intruder at his Iowa home"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Congressman Boswell<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Seventy-seven-year-old Congressman Leonard Boswell and his 22-year-old grandson fought off an armed man during a home invasion Saturday at the congressman\u2019s Iowa farm.<\/p>\n

The physically fit Boswell was a repeatedly decorated helicopter assault pilot during the Vietnam War. He represents Iowa’s Third Congressional District in the U.S. House, a district that includes Polk County and Des Moines.<\/p>\n

A statement from the congressman\u2019s office said the home invasion happened about 10:45 p.m. Saturday. An armed man burst through the front door and attacked Boswell\u2019s middle-aged daughter, Cindy Brown, demanding money. It was not immediately known whether the intruder knew who lived at the farm — or that he was violating federal law by attacking a member of Congress.<\/p>\n

The congressman told a spokesman at his office that heard his daughter\u2019s screams, ran into the home’s entryway and saw the man attacking Cindy. The Congressman then apparently tackled the intruder, trying to wrestle away his gun.<\/p>\n

Boswell\u2019s 22-year-old grandson, Mitchell Brown, came into the room with a shotgun. When he leveled the shotgun on the intruder, the man ran outside and disappeared into the night. The farm is in a rural area near the small town of Lamoni.<\/p>\n

Grant Woodard of the congressman’s office said other than some scrapes and bruises, the family is fine. It was not known whether the congressman was injured or required medical attention.<\/p>\n

The local sheriff, FBI and other agencies are investigating.<\/p>\n

Boswell, a Democrat, is a member of the Blue Dog Coalition, whose members are generally conservative-to-moderate Democrats.<\/p>\n

He spent 20 years in the United States Army,\u00a0first drafted in 1956 as a private.\u00a0He graduated from Artillery Officers Candidate School, eventually rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel.\u00a0During his military career, he earned two Distinguished Flying Crosses, two Bronze Stars, the Soldier’s Medal\u00a0and a number of other awards and decorations. He served two one-year tours of duty in Vietnam and\u00a0two NATO\u00a0tours of duty in Europe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Seventy-seven-year-old Congressman Leonard Boswell and his 22-year-old grandson fought off an armed man during a home invasion Saturday at the congressman\u2019s Iowa farm. The physically fit Boswell was a repeatedly decorated helicopter assault pilot during the Vietnam War. He represents Iowa’s Third Congressional District in the U.S. House, a district that includes Polk County and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":270,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1132,1131,2201],"class_list":["post-4354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-home-invasion","tag-iowa-congressman-leonard-boswell","tag-news"],"yoast_head":"\nFeisty 77-year-old Congressman fights off armed intruder at his Iowa home<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/07\/feisty-77-year-old-congressman-fights-off-armed-intruder-at-his-iowa-home\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Feisty 77-year-old Congressman fights off armed intruder at his Iowa home\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Seventy-seven-year-old Congressman Leonard Boswell and his 22-year-old grandson fought off an armed man during a home invasion Saturday at the congressman\u2019s Iowa farm. The physically fit Boswell was a repeatedly decorated helicopter assault pilot during the Vietnam War. He represents Iowa’s Third Congressional District in the U.S. House, a district that includes Polk County and…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/07\/feisty-77-year-old-congressman-fights-off-armed-intruder-at-his-iowa-home\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beliefnet News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-07-18T01:48:26+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2011-07-18T01:45:34+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/files\/2011\/07\/leonard-boswell.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Feisty 77-year-old Congressman fights off armed intruder at his Iowa home","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/07\/feisty-77-year-old-congressman-fights-off-armed-intruder-at-his-iowa-home","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Feisty 77-year-old Congressman fights off armed intruder at his Iowa home","og_description":"Seventy-seven-year-old Congressman Leonard Boswell and his 22-year-old grandson fought off an armed man during a home invasion Saturday at the congressman\u2019s Iowa farm. The physically fit Boswell was a repeatedly decorated helicopter assault pilot during the Vietnam War. He represents Iowa’s Third Congressional District in the U.S. House, a district that includes Polk County and…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/07\/feisty-77-year-old-congressman-fights-off-armed-intruder-at-his-iowa-home","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2011-07-18T01:48:26+00:00","article_modified_time":"2011-07-18T01:45:34+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/files\/2011\/07\/leonard-boswell.jpg"}],"twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/07\/feisty-77-year-old-congressman-fights-off-armed-intruder-at-his-iowa-home","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/07\/feisty-77-year-old-congressman-fights-off-armed-intruder-at-his-iowa-home","name":"Feisty 77-year-old Congressman fights off armed intruder at his Iowa home","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/07\/feisty-77-year-old-congressman-fights-off-armed-intruder-at-his-iowa-home#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/07\/feisty-77-year-old-congressman-fights-off-armed-intruder-at-his-iowa-home#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/files\/2011\/07\/leonard-boswell.jpg","datePublished":"2011-07-18T01:48:26+00:00","dateModified":"2011-07-18T01:45:34+00:00","author":{"@id":""},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/07\/feisty-77-year-old-congressman-fights-off-armed-intruder-at-his-iowa-home#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/07\/feisty-77-year-old-congressman-fights-off-armed-intruder-at-his-iowa-home"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/07\/feisty-77-year-old-congressman-fights-off-armed-intruder-at-his-iowa-home#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/files\/2011\/07\/leonard-boswell.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/files\/2011\/07\/leonard-boswell.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/07\/feisty-77-year-old-congressman-fights-off-armed-intruder-at-his-iowa-home#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Feisty 77-year-old Congressman fights off armed intruder at his Iowa home"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/270"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4354"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4354\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4357,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4354\/revisions\/4357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}