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Oakland Police are investigating a Tuesday morning shooting in which neighbors say a North Oakland man shot an intruder breaking into his 59th Street home. 

The injured man, who had staggered up to Shattuck Avenue and collapsed near Dorsey’s Locker, a tavern at 5817 Shattuck Ave., was rushed to Highland Hospital for treatment of a serious gunshot wound, police said. 

The incident was first reported to police around 8 a.m. 

Oakland Police Sgt. Michael Polirier said the injured man, Nathan Cooper, 31, of Oakland, was on both probation and parole from previous convictions, including a narcotics arrest. 

“Burglary tools were found at the scene, and he was charged with burglary” as a result of the incident, Polirier said. 

The man who fired the shot, a resident of a home in the 600 block of 59th Street, was questioned by police investigators Tuesday, then released pending a review of the case by the Alameda County District Attorney’s office. 

“Right now, we’re just trying to determine whether the shooting was justified or not justified,” said Officer John Koster Tuesday morning as he stood next to the police tape that had sealed off the block of 59th between Shattuck Avenue and Whitney Street. 

Bob Brokl, a neighbor, said the intruder “was shot at the door as he was breaking into the house.” 

Polirier, who is also the Oakland department’s chief of staff, said the resident of the home “heard a commotion on the front porch. He went and found that someone was trying to break in” and had smashed the window in the door. 

The resident “armed himself and shot the intruder, who fled,” Polirier said. 

Ron Butier, who owns the house, said he was at work at the time of the shooting and declined to discuss the specifics of the shooting, which was done by his housemate. 

“There have been a lot of crimes in this neighborhood and people are feeling on their own, and they’ve been talking about taking matters into their own hands.” 

Annie, a neighbor who lives a block south on 58th Street, said there was a fatal shooting on her block only three months ago. 

“He got shot in the middle of the block and staggered up to Shattuck before he collapsed and died,” she said. 

Sgt. Polirier said that police dispatchers received two calls at nearly the same time, one reporting that a man had collapsed on the street in the 5900 block of Shattuck and the second from the resident of the 59th Street home, “who said he had just shot a burglar.” 

The 59th Street resident told police he had fired because he thought the intruder was brandishing a weapon. 

Annie said she knew the neighbor who had shot the intruder. “He’s a real nice guy. He has some nice things, and this isn’t the first time they’ve tried to break into his house. There are lots of break-ins in the neighborhood, and all the neighbors are trying to help. We’re all single people in studio apartments,” she said. 

“There are shootings all the time,” Butier said. “We hear gunshots all the time.” 

The scene of Tuesday morning’s shooting was just four doors down the street from the home of another North Oakland resident who figured in the shooting of a suspected criminal in 2005. 

Patrick McCullough shot a 15-year-old in the arm in the neighborhood where he had been waging a campaign against drug dealers that neighbors said had been plaguing the neighborhood. 

McCullough, who is now running for the North Oakland City Council seat against three-term incumbent Jane Brunner, told officers he had been surrounded by 15 young men in his front yard, who had yelled “Kill the snitch.” 

McCullough told police he shot the youth after another young man had told his companion, “Give me the pistol.” 

The Alameda County District Attorney’s office declined to prosecute McCullough at the urging of police. No charges were filed in that incident.