« blah | Main | i'm always »
June 25, 2003
brazen
One of the women that works part-time for me (she is actually my boss' admin but does a lot of work in marketing with my team) went home for lunch on Monday to let her dog out to do his business. While she was there, she noticed briefly, as she was walking out of the apartment, how odd it was that her bedroom door was shut.
That evening, when she returned home, she realized that she must have scared off the burgler that was in her house when she was home earlier. He had come through an open window and managed to take some of her jewelry, but had left some key pieces behind, so she knew that she had scared him off. Understandably, she was really shaken by it.
Yesterday she comes by my office on her way home to let her dog out and we talked about it. I told her I would be freaked out to go home alone. Of course, we talked about what the chances of him being there again were and how they were buying new locks and alarms anyway.
Turns out when she got home, the chain on the front door was up...the guy was back and clearly inside. He came back for the rest of the jewelry this time. She freaked, ran back down the walkway to the cops who (on both days) were standing idly watching the construction in front of her house (this is a curious New England phenomenon...we pay our cops buttloads of cash in overtime money to stand around like morons at construction sites. 98% of them can't even be bothered to direct traffic when needed to. If a construction or energy company doesn't call the cops to watch, then mysteriously, the next day, their site will be vandalized...then the cops can say, well, if you only had called us to watch...). Sure enough, the cops were pretty useless in this situation. The guy went out the back window he had broken. Since they were Salem cops on detail work, they didn't really have jurisdiction anyway as she lives in Lynn. They didn't catch him (but I guess the construction guys all came and surrounded the house until they figured out the guy wasn't inside) and it took 20 minutes for the Lynn cops to arrive to continue the investigation.
He left items in her house though and random items from other people's houses strewn across her lawn. A neighbor got a look at him but it's a pretty basic description. 6' tall black guy, clean cut with khaki shorts, tennis shoes and a white polo shirt. And black gloves.
He didn't manage to get all the jewelry this time either--she figures she caught him right when he got there.
I wouldn't be able to sleep at night if it were me. I'd be so terrified. I mean, what if he wasn't just a cat burgler and was more violent...a girl coming home, alone? I had a dream a couple weeks ago about that very thing...walking into a building and realizing that I was alone and that the man in the room with me was going to assault me--I woke up in a sweat, my heart pounding.
My aunt leaves the doors to her house unlocked all the time. Granted, she lives in a small town in the middle of nowhere, but it still shocks me. The sad truth of this world is that you just can't trust people anymore.
Posted by crystallyn at June 25, 2003 07:16 PM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.crystallyn.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/45
Comments
That is very scary. I'd have a window-lock on that bedroom window, pronto!
Posted by: ancarett at June 25, 2003 08:37 PM
that _is_ scary.
I have assault dreams often.. always the same- I'm being attacked and no matter what I do, I can't stop it.. he keeps attacking me no matter what lethal things I do to him, like he won't die.
I would be frantic if I were your friend.. calling alarm people, having various deterrances installed, then calling my ins company to see how much I could get replaced.
Posted by: shanna at June 25, 2003 09:59 PM
OK - I leave my house unlocked (and a front door propped open so the cats can get out on the porch) fairly often. I love living in a small town where the only one murder has occurred in the past 30 years.
Posted by: Niki at June 26, 2003 01:54 PM