YET ANOTHER...home invasion

[dewage83]

22-year-old Daniel Bitcom of Middletown, Connecticut, stands before a judge, charged with breaking into the Day family home in Newington in the dead of night and crashing into their 13-year-old daughter Erin’s room as she slept. Her father, Charles, came to her rescue.

Erin Day, Newington, CT: “He asked, ‘What's wrong.’ I just told him, ‘Help. Someone's in my room." At that point, he just burst the door open and pinned the guy against the wall with the door.”

Charles Day, “With a few expletives, I asked him who he was and what the heck he was doing here and to get the heck out of my house.”

Police say Bitcom did get out and ran. He was caught on nearby Indian Hill Road. In court, the public defender assigned to his case, told the judge Bitcom was visiting a friend who lives near the Days. He said the friend's house is similar to the Days and that too much drink led to a bad situation.

...and the guy says he was drunk and stumbled into the house that looked real similar to his buddys house. i have a couple thigns to say. IF i were to have a 13 y.o. daughter and she yells in the middle of the night LOOK OUT! what the heck is with people. how is anyone suposed to know if he was another home invader who realized that his defendant was about 150 lb. more than him and that he knew he couldnt pull it off?!? we dont! and personally at the weeee hours of the morning im not gonna debate with ANYONE what their doing in my daughters room. This type of crap has got to stop.:banghead: WHAT IS WITH PEOPLE?!

 

[scurtis_34471]

If an adult male kicked in my door in the middle of the night and I found him in my daughter's room, there would be no conversation, but I'd probably need a new carpet.

 

[dewage83]

you know what im saying??? and some counseling for my daughter.

 

[Pat-inCO]

And all of this surprises you - - how?

 

[Titan6]

Dude Where's my House?

 

[dewage83]

And all of this surprises you - - how?

ok well after the 2 deadly home invasions within 6 months i think if i was to get drunk at a friends house i might not wander around the neighborhood late night. what was a 22 y.o doing outside after a night of drinkin??? pissin? yea thats pretty easy NOT to loose your way back to the door.

 

[Nightwing]

Um..... how did drunky "wander in"?
Were the doors locked? Cause when I got to bed.... my doors are are locked. Windows have locks and safety locks.

 

[springmom]

Nightwing, we're pretty obsessive/compulsive about locking up, but the occasional brain fart does happen and one of us gets up in the morning only to realize that we left the front door unlocked all night long. It happens.

Puts me in mind of an evening when I was in high school. I was in a Scottish drum and bugle corps sponsored by the school, comprised of selected juniors and seniors. Juniors were "little sisters" to the seniors' "big sisters" and every year, we would have a middle of the night party to welcome the little sisters into the corps. We'd arrange it with the parents ahead of time, obviously, but we'd sneak in and "kidnap" our little sisters and take them to the party.

Well, I and another senior ended up sharing a little sister (uneven numbers that year) and so on the night in question, off we went. Found the house. Went in. Looked through every bedroom, all full of sleeping occupants. Andrea wasn't there.

We looked at each other, just about peed our pants, and RAN for the front door; whereupon we realized we had the right address, but the wrong street.

The scary thing? With two teenage girls roaming the house and giggling, NOBODY woke up. Just as well, of course, for us.

At least this young lady was a light enough sleeper that Drunken Idjit woke her up.

Springmom

 

[gym]

That's a tecnique used by burglers and second story guys all the time, that one and the guy walking around your yard with a leash "looking for rover". You have to keep yourself and loved ones in a state of calm readiness, so everyone knoes what to do in case of one of these probes. I get the same interference from my wife, who has a bad habit of leaving doors unlocked, it drives me nuts, but she is one of those people who just dosen't listen, so I have to check whenever she goes in or out. And when she sees a home invasion on TV, she gets all upset, duh

 

[Low-Sci]

The important adjective here being "calm". It won't benefit you to fly off the handle over every drunken shenanigan that gets pulled. There's really no revelation in this story.

Yes, there are people who'd like to come into your house and take something from you, whatever that may be. Yes there are people who will actually try it. You knew all of this already.

I'm not saying you need to understand the drunk's position, or feel his pain, or any of that nonsense. I'm only saying that when you lose your temper, the person who loses out is you. To deal with a potential threat effectively, people have to maintain a reasonable level of calm so they don't lose the ability to think straight.

 

[bogie]

Pedophiles use the leash thing too... Oh, I lost my doggy... Will you help me find him?

 

[wdlsguy]

we're pretty obsessive/compulsive about locking up, but the occasional brain fart does happen and one of us gets up in the morning only to realize that we left the front door unlocked all night long. It happens.

We have made it a habit to keep our doors locked. I have made it a habit to check the doors before retiring for the evening. Every once in a great while I will get up in the morning and discover I failed to secure a door the night before.

I also have made it a habit to arm the security system before retiring for the evening, and we have a good watch dog, so it's unlikely someone could wander in without attracting a bunch of attention.

 

[mbt2001]

Anyone who would get that drunk is a public menance, a manslaughter charge waiting to happen.

I have been VERY drunk in my time, but never anything approaching that.

Um..... how did drunky "wander in"?
Were the doors locked? Cause when I got to bed.... my doors are are locked. Windows have locks and safety locks

As if a door lock does anything anyway...

 

[dewage83]

The important adjective here being "calm".

I like what you bring to the discussion. you sound like an old wiseman. and i forgot to mention at first, good thing it ended the way it did, though, im not sure i would of handled it the same. but your right being calm is the way to go.

I have been VERY drunk in my time, but never anything approaching that.

+100

 

[dralarms]

Oh heck no, somebody would be needin some holes plugged. Sorry

First locks won't keep someone out that wants in, sure I lock my door, dead bolted, locked and chained and the plate has 4 inch screws in it. I also have an alarm system and use it (be stupid of me to get my house broken into and not have my alarm system on since I sell and install them). My wife and I live alone now (thank God the kids are grown (I do ust that term loosely)) and if I hear a noise I first feel for her to see if I need to be alarmed, once or twice I have heard something and found she was right there beside me, full alert mode, found out that a package had fell over in my office, oh well it happens. But to find someone wandering around inside of my house unless they were fall down drunk would be a bad day for them. Shoot, when my daughter moved in for a few days while looking a new place to stay they were told that I have 1 rule, if the alarm goes off stay put, if it announces fire get the heck out of the house by any means necessary, but if it says intruder, stay in your bed (or under, don't matter to me) because I could never forgive myself if someone I love was to get hurt on my watch.

 

[Aguila Blanca]

On the subject of locks, and forgetting to use them as "locks" -- Awhile back I realized that the lock on the door from the garage into the kitchen was in bad shape, and didn't match the other locks on the house. It had obviously been replaced at some point and was much inferior to the good quality Schlage locks on the other exterior doors.

So I decided to replace it. The Schlage-brand stuff at Lowe's and Home Depot is junk, so that wasn't going to be the answer. Stopped in at a local locksmith shop who sells Schlage products, Yes, he could get me the same locks that were on the other doors. ONE lockset would cost me $175!

That wasn't going to happen, either, and he wasn't surprised. There was no other business, so after saying "Thanks but no thanks" we settled into a chat. And out of the chat came the information that the same lockset, withOUT the little turnbutton thingie on the inside that allows you to UNlock the lock, cost just about half of what the first one would have cost.

My wife was also in the habit of forgetting to lock the door. That door, in fact, since that's the door we use 95% of the time. That made it a no-brainer. Got the new lockset, installed it, and we now CANNOT for get to lock the door, because it is always locked.

There is a key stashed in the garage for if we lock ourselves out, but so far (knock on wood) it hasn't happened. I love it. No more worrying about whether or not I double-checked to see if she locked the door.

Locks have different "functions." Yeah, I know you know, but that's actually a hardware industry term and they use it to describe what a lock is intended for. The usual outside door lock, with the thumb button in the inside knob, is cleverly named an "Entrance" lock. The one I got, with no button, is a "Storage Room" lock. The inside is never locked, so we can always get out.

Just a thought.