wife needs training after incident at home today

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fallout mike

fallout mike

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I'm out of town today. The wife was home alone. She was in the car about to leave. She left the car door open to run back in the house. As she was opening the door 2 thugs came around the house running towards her holding the leaf part of a plastic garden rake over their faces. She just got the security door shut when they were trying to open it. They were telling her they were security and for her to open up. Her purse with her phone in it was in the car with the door open. She had just put her .357 in the safe bc she can't have it on the property where she works, which is a state facility. She was panicked, and didn't think to get a gun out of the safe in case they kicked the door in. She didn't think to hit a panic button on the alarm. They left after a couple minutes. But not before taking her purse with them. We called and cancelled debit and credit cards and called the cellular provider and had the phone shut off. Hers and our children's social security cards were in her wallet. It could have been much worse. Just a few weeks ago in a town 30 minutes away a gang made statements saying they needed to start raping and killing white women. That did just that a few days later. Who knows, my wife may have been #2.

It looks like I need to get my wife and kids drilled on situations like that along with getting my wife to start carrying on her person. She panicked and didn't know what to do. I'm always packing and don't panick. I've been the supposedly victim of numerous attempted muggings and robberies that has got me used to it. I used to work in very bad parts of some very bad towns.

Any suggestions from you guys on what I can do to instill a course of action in my wife, 10 year old daughter and 9 year old son?
 
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Very frightening. Glad your wife did not come to worse harm. Very upsetting nonetheless. My feeling is that situational awareness is the best defense, but I know it's very difficult to practice with young children.
 
Glad she is ok. That sucks. Never leave a car running when going in the house.

Consider practicing a couple situations but don't get carried away. Help your wife get in a mindset of preparedness.
 
Outside of leaving the car door open with her purse inside, she did the right thing retreating to a safe locked area. I doubt she would have had time to get a carry gun out seeing she didn't see it coming in the first place. A more concerning issue is once 'safe' she couldn't pull it together to figure out what was step two, panic alarm or retrieving her weapon from the safe.
 
A little more info. We are at the end of a short dead end street on the edge of town. 10 houses total on our street. Very quiet street. Never any issues.

Also car wasn't running. She just left the door open and the car was in our carport.
 
Scary situation. Don't be too hard on her, you'd be amazed how many times I've seen full-time professionals make serious tactical mistakes under pressure.

Hopefully she'll look at this as an opportunity from which she can learn how to better handle these situations in the future. But, at least she got in the house and locked the door! All in all, property can be replaced.

I'm a full-time big city police officer, and I supervise around 20 officers at any given time. Even I've run back to the house when I've forgotten something, sometimes with the car unlocked. Lets face it, we can't all be "on" 24/7/365, and you can't live life in a quiet neighborhood as if you're on a battlefield.

So, I'd consider your wife's situation successful, with a few opportunities for improvement.

What did she do well?

She secured herself in the home. That's number one! She didn't run outside to try to stop a simple property theft and risk getting hurt, killed, raped, etc. She would have been better off if she had made it to a gun, but in most states she could not legally have legally shot these two dirtbags for taking her purse from the car. Granted, the sight of a gun would have likely made them reconsider, but shooting them for a theft from an unoccupied vehicle won't fly in most states.

What could she have done better, realistically?

1) Made it to a gun in case the subjects forced entry.
2) Hit the panic button on the alarm AND called 911 (panic alarms aren't taken too seriously at residences, due to the number of false alarms that are set off each day. Calling 911 with a description of the subjects and their actions will get you a quicker police response).
 
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I was flying a mission to Australia and getting my annual check-ride. While the other FE was in the seat and the examiner was grilling me, we came off the tanker after an in-flight refueling. We went back in a few times for pilot currency, and the FE in the seat inadvertently left the AR isolation valves open- so our fuel pumps were trying to pressurize the boom- big no no. I spotted the mistake and was trying to get between the examiner and the panel so I could privately mention it to the other FE, but too late, the examiner saw it and went nuts. He leapt up and shouted, “GET OUT OF THE SEAT!” Before the Engineer could even move he laid into him for about five minutes, then told him to stay there. Later while he was observing me do my post-flight he told me he really didn’t want to Q3 (disqualified for flight duties) the other FE. I just chuckled and told him that after the way he yelled at him, it was unlikely he would ever make that mistake again. In the end he agreed and nothing more came of it.

Sorry for the long anecdote, but being retired I’m entitled. ;)

Suffice to say that she learned the lesson and any further input from you is pointless and probably going to be viewed negatively. We don’t like to be reminded of our mistakes. Don’t rub her nose in it- just be supportive and see if there is anything you can do to make her feel secure.
 
Here's another vote for emphasizing everything she did right.... later (not much later) you can begin to work on improving her responses to possible threats.

One other small matter... make a point of talking to all your neighbors about this incident to bring them up to speed on the threat that just occurred. Your best defense, hands down, are your neighbors when trouble comes prowling near your house. This was a point I always made when visiting crime scenes in residential areas during my years as a cop... I've always thought that looking out for your neighbors was money in the bank when bad guys come into residential areas looking to score.
 
^^^^ This. NRA also offers a course called Basic Personal Protection in the Home. Even the NRA Basic Pistol class discusses having a plan for various scenarios and practicing the plan with all family members. Just like in other situations, a person will respond according to their training. No training or plan = panic.
 
Another vote for your wife handling the situation correctly. She took care of #1 which is always the most important step.

I would suggest you take a look at your exterior and perimeter security. You said they can around the house using a rake for concealment of their face. Where did they get the rake and how did they get on your property?

Good fences make good neighbors.
 
Coloradokevin is quite right. Don't be too hard on the old girl, she was successful to the extent that she survived. If 27 years working in the criminal justice system has taught me anything its that its very easy to sit around and criticize someone's response to a dangerous situation from the comfort of a bosses swivel chair or your comfy Laz-e-boy. You are right to get your family working on security drills, but don't start from the "Mommy messed up" proposition.
 
The small town we live in has gotten bad. We are working towards moving. We recently bought some land out in the country that we will be moving to as soon as we can. Our "viscious" dog is a Jack Russell terrier. Not much help there.
 
Even in the countryside work on precautions. The biggest difference away from town or city is (wait for it....) no witnesses. Add to that the problem that bad actors out in the country are rarely obvious or particularly visible (unless their crib is able to be seen from the road as you drive by...).

As a friend remarked a few years ago about a small village on the outskirts of the Everglades... You knew the moment that crack came to the area since everyone began to experience serious theft/burglary problems (and all of this in the most quiet, out of the way area where you'd expect to be left alone).
 
I'm super relieved she's OK and thank you for sharing the story. We live on a dead end street with about 20 houses on it....quiet. Sounds like your neighborhood.

I send empathy. Glad yer all OK.

VooDoo
 
I'm happy your wife's okay. As others said, she did fine given the circumstances. I'd discuss with her training for what would have happened had they gotten in, and take some of the courses others recommended. Have you considered also taking self defense classes as a family? It's a good idea for her and your kids to have an idea of how to defend themselves if she has no access to weapons. I'd also look into deterrents such as an alarm if you don't have one (you did mention a panic button) and security cameras outside your house with signs announcing that the alarm and cameras are there. Hopefully, knowing that they're going to be on video will make criminals want to stay away.
 
fallout,

She needs to carry the gun ON HER and not in a purse, not in the safe, not in the car. Carry the gun on her and get to the range often.

If you don't have a CCW (and her to) get one. Get it now. Don't wait.

Also there are some reality based training schools for self defense. Find one and attend it with her.

Deaf
 
not a pleasant thought

but it was a good thing the kids weren't in the car when she ran back to the house (which was before the thugs made their appearance) or the BGs would have been between her and the kids.
 
Hers and our children's social security cards were in her wallet.
Click to expand...
Why? I'm trying to think of a reason one would need to carry social security cards around on a regular basis and can't come up with one.
 
JohnKSa said:
Why? I'm trying to think of a reason one would need to carry social security cards around on a regular basis and can't come up with one.
Click to expand...
My SSN, DL number, CHL number, some rather convoluted computer passwords, address, phone numbers, etc... are all MEMORIZED by me.

But that's the computer programmer in me.

Deaf
 
I would call Equifax and put a identity theft alert on all of your social security numbers and maybe look into lifelock in case they attempt to use them.

When calling Equifax, you can request they put a message with your phone to call you before any contract or line of credit is given under that social #. Thank GOD you family is ok
 
Mine does the same thing. She always thinks I am being paranoid, as do some of my jellow brained relatives, "on her side". Even when it comes to locking the door on holidays. This is because nothing ever happened to any of them.
Well 2 weeks ago my step daughter, got scammed out of 22 thousand dollars, all their money, that IRS scam. Now they are a bit more on guard, but because it was a non violent crime, they still don't get it.
It's impossible to drill this into the heads of people who live in la la land. My wife won't carry, always an excuse. But if something happens, and I am not around to stop it,, there is no coming back.
 
One time we got a call saying we won a pleasure cruise... But to claim it they needed our credit card number and ssns. My wife asked me for 'em!

I said heck no and told her to hang up. I explained that how could we 'win' but they could not afford to send us the tickets?

She is much more savvy now and we always tear up 'free' stuff and ignore telemarketers.

Deaf
 
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