Farmer Kills Inmate: Jerome Mauderly, 71, Shoots Escaped Criminal Who Kept Him And His Wife Hostage [VIDEO]

An escaped convict entered the home of Jerome Mauderly, 71, and his wife Carolyn, 66, but didn't manage to get away with it. Police said that Rodney Long, 38, who had been on the run for part of the weekend, entered the couple's Bedford home in rural Iowa at 10 p.m. Monday. He removed the shotgun Mauderly had on his nightstand and disabled all the phones in the house except for the line in the couple's bedroom. He placed the shotgun in the kitchen and proceeded to keep Mauderly, a retired prison guard and farmer, and his wife hostage, threatening them with a gun for several hours as he rummaged through the house.

The area was already on high alert with the news, police said. The Mauderly's home is located in the middle of farmland, and their closest neighbors are about a mile away. No one was near enough to know what was going on inside the house. "(The Mauderlys) knew the situation. There was an escaped inmate, armed and dangerous. They were not the only people in the community that had loaded weapons that night," Mitch Mortvedt, spokesman forIowa Division of Criminal Investigation, said.

At around 2 a.m., Mauderly made his big move, dashing into the kitchen to retrieve his shotgun while Carolyn called the police from the bedroom. When Long returned, Jerome shot him in the torso. Police found Long laying face down in the kitchen when they arrived at the scene. The trooper who responded to the couple's 911 call was 200 miles away already searching for Long. Police will not be pressing charges against Jerome as it was determined that he acted in self-defense.

Long had previously shot a police officer who was in pursuit of him Sunday. He fired at him twice when he confronted him, then stole his patrol car. A second officer pursued Long for 40 minutes until Long crashed the vehicle and ran away. The Mauderly home is less than a mile away from where the accident occurred. The officer who was shot is in stable condition and expected to recover.