Mobile, AL (WKRG) Like looking for a needle in a haystack, friends of Michael Irving combed through the overgrown ditches on Bay Road searching for the missing shotgun used in Thursday’s home invasion.

Irving, a Vietnam veteran battling cancer., was inside his home when three suspects showed up at his back door and fired a shotgun through the window pane, striking him in the right shoulder.

“They were going to kill him, plain and simple. You don’t fire a shotgun at someone unless you mean it. But, guess what?  He’s a marine, and he came back with a vengeance. Of all people to pick on why pick on a marine?” Irving’s close friend who goes by the name, “Roadkill,” told us.

He says Irving switched his hand gun to his right hand and shot all three of them before they had time to reload.

19-year-old Joseph Heathcock, the suspect accused of firing the shotgun, and Casey Ray Gann appeared in court Friday morning after being discharged from the hospital. A  judge ruled that neither of them would be eligible for a bond.

Irving told authorities that his home was broken into several days prior to Thursday’s incident. The suspects in break-in took off with all of his pain medications.

“To think that something like this could happen!  Are you kidding me? He’s dying of cancer. Are you people that sick that you got to have these drugs?” Roadkill said, mentioning that his friend was afraid after the first home invasion, so he was more than prepared when it happened to him again.

Authorities are still looking for another suspect who deputies say is a black male who participated in the home invasion.

Chasatie Dulabhan did not appear in court and remains hospitalized.