Man shot while confronting alleged thieves in his Dauphin Island Parkway driveway

Thankfully he's okay. In fact, he told FOX10 News Reporter Alexa Knowles all about the disturbing crime. It happened around 5:30 a.m.

Matthew Roberts says he heard about eight shots, and didn't even realize he'd been hit until he noticed blood on his pants.

"I come out of the garage right here, run beside that palm, and that's when they started shooting," says Roberts.

When Roberts made his routine walk to his truck in the morning, he had visitors. He was loading up for another day of landscape work, when he saw three men rummaging through his stuff.

"[I] made a couple trips out to the truck, the last time that I did come out, there were two to three guys in the truck, had the doors open, the bed of the truck down...they had just got started doing what they were doing, they had a few things from the front door scattered out...all this stuff here was in the floorboard."

The owner of a landscaping company couldn't afford to have his equipment stolen, again. It has happened before, but this time it got violent. He started yelling at them to get out of his driveway, and they took off running. So did Roberts.

"I was running towards them, trying the best I could to catch hold of one of them, which, I had no idea they were armed."

What he heard next, made that very clear.

"I didn't stop, what I should have done was stop but it happened so fast, the gun shots were fast, it was bow bow bow!"

His wife, Teresa, woke up to the gunshots, and ran outside to help her husband, but he pushed her back inside. His son came out to help too.

"My heart dropped to my toes," says Teresa Roberts.

A bullet was lodged in his upper thigh, but Roberts kept chasing the crooks. Then, got in his truck to try to find them. But he couldn't. The pain was too much, so he turned around. After a quick hospital trip, he's back home, thankful he was only hit once.

"All of those bullets came close to me and one got me, they have no respect for human life, whoever it is."

The Mobile County Sheriff's Office is looking for two or three men, or any information that could help find these guys. If you know anything, give them a call.

Meanwhile, Roberts and his wife say they're going to be extra careful from now on. However, they say they're not surprised a crime like this happened in their neighborhood.