HAMMOND | In a bloody climax to months of terror, an accused stalker was shot to death Monday night by the unwilling object of his obsession after he broke into her Hessville home, police said.
Ryan Lee Bergner, 41, of the 3000 block of Crane Place in Hammond, was pronounced dead from gunshot wounds to his abdomen shortly after 10:30 p.m. at a local hospital.
His death marked the end of an escalating sequence of violent acts against the 51-year-old woman. It began with a single date in June, she said.
"I didn't want it to turn out like this," the woman said Tuesday afternoon while removing yellow police tape from the back of her house in the 6900 block of Tennessee Avenue.
Just hours before, the woman was watching television in her living room when she heard Bergner break a bathroom window near her back door. She called 911, police said.
The emergency operator advised her to lock herself in her bedroom until police arrived, and she ran upstairs to do so, retrieving a pistol given to her for protection by a friend earlier in the day.
Bergner already had broken into her house through a back window over the weekend, destroying a clock radio and stealing several of her undergarments, she reported to police Saturday,
Police records show Bergner also had tried to kick in the woman's front door a week earlier after accosting her at her job and being ejected from the business by her co-workers. He also was suspected of slashing her Jeep's tires on at least two occasions, police records show.
"This isn't over yet," Bergner told her Nov. 3, according to police reports of the incident.
Hiding in her closet on Monday night, the woman said she heard Bergner enter the bedroom, then watched as he opened the closet door.
She said she told him to stop, but he kept coming. She fired the 9 mm semiautomatic three times.
"I was shaking so bad, I didn't think I'd hit him," the woman recalled Tuesday afternoon. "He just kept coming."
Now in the closet with her, Bergner grabbed the woman's neck with both hands and began choking her, she said.
"And then he just stopped," she said, finger-shaped bruises still visible on her throat 17 hours after the struggle.
Police found her in her front yard when they arrived moments later, and they found Bergner -- wearing black leather gloves and a brown leather jacket -- lying partially in the bedroom closet, On the bed nearby was a Walther PPK pistol.
On Tuesday afternoon, detectives still were searching the Crane Place home Bergner shared with his brother for evidence. They declined to comment.
The case is expected to be presented today to the Lake County prosecutor, who could choose to file charges against the woman or deem the shooting justifiable homicide.
Bergner had not been charged over any of the half-dozen previous complaints made against him because, as misdemeanors, the responsibility rests with the victim to seek charges with the prosecutor in Crown Point, and she apparently had not done so.
"We only went out on that one date," the woman said Tuesday. "I got a look at his temper, and realized I didn't want anything to do with him. But he wouldn't take no for an answer."
She said she would be going back to work today.
