Roller-Derby Rookie Thwarts Prowler with Medieval Sword and Fists of Fury

Why a sword? The Indianapolis woman couldn’t find her gun.

That happenstance may well have spared 30-year-old Jacob Wessel’s life.

Dolley was asleep Thursday night around midnight, reports IndyStar.com, but jumped out of bed when she heard a man’s voice in her house. A man lurking in her living room had broken in through the back door.

Dolley, standing 5-foot-6, said she immediately attacked, punching him about 10 times and cornering him in her bedroom.

She reached for her gun in a nearby drawer, but she accidentally opened the wrong drawer during the chaos of the moment, so her gun wasn’t there.

She reached for her backup weapon, a Japanese-styled sword called ninjato, which she keeps near her bed.

Dolley — recently recruited into roller derby — trained in the art of medieval combat for 20 years as a member of the Society for Creative Anachronism, a group that recreates medieval skills and crafts. She works at the Indiana Department of Environmental Management.

Today, she’s nursing sore knuckles.

“I didn’t think I was getting good blows in, but my knuckles are bruised today,” Dolley told IndyStar.com. “Hitting someone like that, it isn’t like the movies.”

Wessel, who now faces felony charges, told Dolley he was sorry as the cops took him away. Before he landed in a jail cell, however, they stopped at a local hospital.