THIS HAPPENED TO ME
He Broke Into Our Home Twice
What I remember is his smile
My husband Pierce and I were at home kissing, because we do that sometimes. He was facing the window, and noticed the lights on each side of our garage were on.
“Did you turn on the light in the garage when you got home from shopping?” he asked. “Not that I recall,” I said. Yet, the lights were definitely on, and one of us would have to go outside to turn them off because the garage is separated from our home by at least twenty feet. Pierce volunteered and I waited.
My husband came back a few minutes later and we started talking — only then the lights on the garage went right back on again. Pierce decided to return to the garage. Though I wasn’t crazy about the idea, he walked back to it and disappeared inside.
About two minutes later, Pierce emerged from the garage and the lights were off. When he was halfway back to our home, the lights turned on again. Pierce walked inside, slamming our front door.
“Someone’s in the garage.” he told me. “They broke our door to get in.”
I looked at him, not knowing what to say.
“I told him to get the fuck out,” he told me.
“Tell me you didn’t do that,” I said.
“I did.”
“Did you actually see him?”
“Not at all,” he replied. “But I know someone’s in there. Who else would be turning the lights on?”
There is a bigger story here, about addiction, the effect of pandemics on crime and people’s desperation; and how we don’t really see each other. Ours is a much smaller story, part of the bigger one, but narrowed to a summer evening and two people trying to navigate the lives they worked hard for.
That night, I called 911.
The dispatcher told me to stay inside the house and let me know the police were nearby. A minute or two later, the door to the garage (which was partly off its hinges) opened and a man strolled outside, looking for all the world like he was at a party. He was obviously living deep inside his own story, whatever it might be.
His sweatshirt was bright red, and he was wearing shorts and sneakers and had curly, light-brown hair. I can tell you all this because it was summer and still light enough to see clearly.
“He’s out!” I told the 911 dispatcher. “It’s okay,” she said. “The police will be there very soon.”
Meanwhile, the burglar managed to leap over our back fence — which, to me, was fairly impressive — and disappear from view into our neighbor’s yard. Shortly afterwards, Pierce told me the police were at the top of our driveway.
They caught the burglar in a few minutes and brought him to their squad car. Before they left, they asked him to stand in front of the car and waved a flashlight at him so we could confirm he was the man we saw leaving our garage. It seemed an open-and-shut case, and we hoped nothing else would come of it.
Unfortunately, there was more to come.
The next day, a police officer called to ask us for an estimate of damage (which was the price of our garage door, at least). He told us the man’s name and we looked him up in our local sheriff’s database. He was described as a “thirty-five-year-old Caucasian male” and wore the same smile I had seen when he left our garage.
The police also told us the burglar had served time for selling drugs, and appeared to be high on meth when arrested. They said his clothes were sopping wet, meaning he had come from the wetlands behind our house. He told the police someone had been chasing after him and he was looking for a place to hide.
The burglar was wanted in the next county over (along with ours) for a few different crimes. It was the end of May, 2021, and the pandemic was wreaking havoc with the justice system (not that it needs any help). The burglar was in jail for a few weeks, then released on bail and told to show up a month or two later for a court hearing.
The day after he was released, our garage door was broken a second time. It was early morning, close to seven, when I heard my husband and other voices outside, as he had called the police once more. Our original door had been professionally repaired, but the lock used to secure it had been wrenched off and flung toward the back wall of the garage.
Nothing else was disturbed — our locked cars, tools, and other garage-type stuff were all intact. So why had this person returned — and why did I think it was him?
First, the door was broken just a day after we found out this guy had been released. Second, nothing was disturbed, but the door was broken forcefully. It could either be a brand-new burglar (which just seems doubtful to me); or the same one, who either came to pick up drugs he left in our garage or wanted to take revenge on us for calling 911.
It was the second break-in that got to me. Before that, I had a vague uneasiness, but I mostly managed to shrug it off. After the second time, I felt he was targeting us on purpose. It was also disconcerting to know he could find his way back to our address and do what he wanted — but without a photo or alarm, we had no chance of proving anything.
The second break-in also reminded me of something else. A few months before the first incident, my husband and I were driving home from the store when a car zoomed out of a highway exit and nearly collided with us. Pierce honked at them, and while some may have ignored him, the couple in this car (a black SUV) followed us and then cut us off on the turnoff to our home.
A woman who appeared to be in her early twenties got out of the car, along with a man who later reminded me of the burglar. They started taunting us for disrespecting them. I remember the sadism in his smile — and how they both seemed to be enjoying the thought of intimidating us. We said nothing and just stared at them, but I was so rattled I didn’t write down their license plate number.
After a few minutes, the couple got back in the SUV and drove away, and we didn’t see them again. Yet, part of me wonders if the man we saw that day was, in fact, the burglar who waltzed into our garage a few months later, though I don’t think the incidents were related.
Or, I may just be feeling paranoid. I have to admit that for the rest of that year, I was a mess. My husband and I got SimpliSafe and kept it on almost constantly. I taped the lights into an off position every night, so if anyone tried to break in, they’d have to wrestle with the tape to get the light on, giving us the advantage. I also bought a large screen to put around our alarm’s base station to make that harder to find as well.
I then kept pepper spray next to my bed. My husband had the SimpliSafe panic button on the other side of the bed. And when I got home from work and it was dark, I carried the spray from the garage to my door.
A few months ago, we received a letter saying the court had decided the man’s case and we could ask to be “reimbursed” for whatever he owed us for property damage. We decided charging him for the doors would do little for us. It mainly left us open to the idea of him returning to kick in a third door, and there was little chance he had the money to pay us back, in any case.
We have since put two doors onto our garage, one of which has bars on it — though the expense was a stretch. The doors are also wired to an alarm. Overall, I’d say the measures we took made me feel better, but I’m still pretty jumpy, especially when I allow myself to think about what happened.
Mainly, I think I haven’t quite processed it all yet. I know there are things we could have done better, like having an alarm system before the burglary happened. But shouldn’t you be allowed to be safe in your own home regardless?
I know that question is naïve, and feel some relief that we set up some protections against this kind of thing happening again. As far as feeling safe goes, though, I think that’s going to take longer than I thought — and won’t necessarily be solved by a burglar alarm.
And this man who smiles while he’s breaking and stealing and scaring people — what’s he doing now? Is he really happy living this way?
I don’t have the answer. All I can think about is that smile — and how it still makes me feel like he’s around here. Waiting for me in the garage, if I forget to close the door.
Turning the light on.
