I am typing this to solidify in my mind what I have learned from this incident, hear your suggestions, and perhaps allow others to learn from this incident as well.
To set the stage: it's 2:56am and 9 days before my wife and I move out of our home to another state.
We hear glass shatter. My wife yells "what was that?" We both have handguns (loaded, unchambered) within reach (no kids), as well as a phone, but I leave them behind when I investigate because we are packed up and I assumed something breakable had fallen over, or something big had fallen over and broken our window.
Next door to our bedroom is the kitchen and that's where I see that the vertical blinds are swinging slightly--suggesting the sliding glass door window was broken. This is doubly puzzling since I see no glass on the floor and there is nothing in the room that could have fallen over to break the glass. Through a gap in the swinging blinds I see broken glass on the patio and a brick.
I tell my wife to call 911, chamber my Glock 21, and take a barricade position just inside the bedroom door. My wife is on the phone with 911 who is vectoring a unit to us. She has a chambered Taurus 24/7 with her. At this point, I do not know if the break in had failed, if it was a diversion so others could enter through another window, or if one or more people will try to enter again. I am thinking multiple armed intruders since only an unarmed idiot would attempt to break into an occupied house in Texas. (Upon telling my neighbors what had happened, the majority said something like, "if somebody came into my house, they would get shot.")
I felt adrenaline, but not so much that I felt jumpy or out of control. My wife later said the same thing. Much to my surprise, two separate units arrived within 5 minutes. 911 said help had arrived and then hung up. I was hoping they would provide a more positive handoff to the cops, but they did not. I waited until I saw flashlights and heard the cops talking in my backyard and patio before we put the guns away. (More on this later). One cop then knocked on my front door and I opened it.
The cursory investigation showed the muddy tracks of a young adult on my patio (I had watered the lawn that night). A brick from the neighbors retaining wall was on our back patio. The would-be intruder had thrown the brick at my sliding glass door, but it had only shattered the outer pane before bouncing back. It did bow the glass or door sufficiently to bend the frame and disturb the vertical blinds. A search of the area did not reveal any other signs of the intruder. The cop said it was likely criminal mischief rather than attempted burglary or home invasion. While the neighborhood has slowly grown seedier, there is very little crime in it. My neighbors later commented that there were several gangsta types in the neighborhood and they tend to come out at night.
The cop took my info and asked if I wanted to press charges if they found somebody. I said yes and he appeared surprised that I would...I think because he had made it clear that the likelihood of finding somebody was slim, and now somebody would have to investigate further anyway (and this would be months from now due to a backlog of cases). By the time the cops left, it was about 4:30am. My wife and I dozed and watched TV for an hour or two until it was time to get up for work. That night and the next day, my wife and I discussed our actions.
1. Initial reaction. Glass shattering is not a normal house sound at 3am. I should have grabbed the Glock and passed the phone to my wife immediately, then attempted to evaluate the house by listening for intruders while barricaded and phone at the ready. Had the glass broken completely, one or more armed intruders could have been outside my bedroom door in seconds as we were the first door on the right (no hallway...we open into the combined dining/living area). I am not sure if my decision to explore the house first was a product of my being asleep 5 seconds ago...I did feel wide awake and the adrenaline was starting. I am concerned that my wife's exclamation of "what was that" combined with my spidey-sense hinting that it was possible that something could be amiss was not sufficient to compel me to grab gun and phone. I didn't even think of them. It is almost as if I forgot they were there.
2. House exterior. My wife and I are penny pinchers. We never turned on the porch or patio lights. In fact, the light by the garage/backyard gate was burned out. We didn't even know how to turn on our backyard security light. When our neighbors turn on their security lights, they light up our front and backyards (we are a ranch, our neighbors are both 2-story homes). We failed to notice that they had stopped using their security lights...possibly due to hard economic times. Unlike most of our neighbors, we park both our cars inside our garage. We keep the blinds closed at night. We have no lights on inside the house when we sleep. In retrospect, it is likely the intruder thought the house was vacant or its occupants were on vacation. Other factors: the gate to the backyard was not locked though there is a place for a padlock. The gate opens to the side of our house where there are no windows (on our neighbor's house) facing our house. An intruder can enter our backyard unobserved. The area behind our backyard is a drainage area that is overgrown with vegetation. It is not hard to scale our fence due to electrical boxes on either side of the fence...you can climb onto one, leap the fence, and land on another.
3. Weapons Handling. When the cops arrived, I put my Glock away and told my wife to safe her 24/7. She said she could not. She handed it to me to try and the lever would not move to safe. I turned on the light and saw that the pistol was not in full battery. In the excitement of the moment, she had rode the slide forward while chambering a round, and the round had not chambered properly. It was slightly nose up so the gun was not in full battery. It would not have fired if she needed to use it.
We had a lot of sleepless nights as we packed up that week. Was it criminal mischief? Did some kid do this on a dare? Did they do it in revenge for some perceived slight? Or did a burglar find an occupied house rather than an unoccupied one? Perhaps the intruder was unwilling to give more warning to me and the neighbors by re-throwing the brick to break the other pane of glass. More ominiously, maybe they were testing our alarm system (we don't have one or a dog, but we do have a security system sign outside our front door) or they were testing the cops' response time. (I am happy they arrived so quickly...perhaps it would deter someone who was watching...especially if they thought we had an alarm system. By the way, according to the cop, break-ins in our area tend to be smash and grabs during the day when people are at work. They come in through the sliding glass door and ignore the alarm--just grab what they see and get out within a minute or two before anyone can respond).
In any case, we had to prepare for the worst. We fixed our lights and learned how to use them. We told our neighbors to watch out for each other. Since we were moving in days and did not care about how the house looked inside, we placed boxes in front of windows and doors so anybody who tried to get in would have to deal with a maze of obstacles while we barricaded.
We also started thinking about the house we would be moving into. We will have an alarm system. We will use our existing exterior lights and add motion-activated security lights. We have a neighborhood watch and already have relationships with some of our neighbors. The house itself is deep inside a development that is difficult to escape from without being seen. The phone will now be beside my wife's bedside. My wife will spend more time at the range with her 24/7.
We sleep better now but will never forget the shocking noise of shattering glass at 3am.
To set the stage: it's 2:56am and 9 days before my wife and I move out of our home to another state.
We hear glass shatter. My wife yells "what was that?" We both have handguns (loaded, unchambered) within reach (no kids), as well as a phone, but I leave them behind when I investigate because we are packed up and I assumed something breakable had fallen over, or something big had fallen over and broken our window.
Next door to our bedroom is the kitchen and that's where I see that the vertical blinds are swinging slightly--suggesting the sliding glass door window was broken. This is doubly puzzling since I see no glass on the floor and there is nothing in the room that could have fallen over to break the glass. Through a gap in the swinging blinds I see broken glass on the patio and a brick.
I tell my wife to call 911, chamber my Glock 21, and take a barricade position just inside the bedroom door. My wife is on the phone with 911 who is vectoring a unit to us. She has a chambered Taurus 24/7 with her. At this point, I do not know if the break in had failed, if it was a diversion so others could enter through another window, or if one or more people will try to enter again. I am thinking multiple armed intruders since only an unarmed idiot would attempt to break into an occupied house in Texas. (Upon telling my neighbors what had happened, the majority said something like, "if somebody came into my house, they would get shot.")
I felt adrenaline, but not so much that I felt jumpy or out of control. My wife later said the same thing. Much to my surprise, two separate units arrived within 5 minutes. 911 said help had arrived and then hung up. I was hoping they would provide a more positive handoff to the cops, but they did not. I waited until I saw flashlights and heard the cops talking in my backyard and patio before we put the guns away. (More on this later). One cop then knocked on my front door and I opened it.
The cursory investigation showed the muddy tracks of a young adult on my patio (I had watered the lawn that night). A brick from the neighbors retaining wall was on our back patio. The would-be intruder had thrown the brick at my sliding glass door, but it had only shattered the outer pane before bouncing back. It did bow the glass or door sufficiently to bend the frame and disturb the vertical blinds. A search of the area did not reveal any other signs of the intruder. The cop said it was likely criminal mischief rather than attempted burglary or home invasion. While the neighborhood has slowly grown seedier, there is very little crime in it. My neighbors later commented that there were several gangsta types in the neighborhood and they tend to come out at night.
The cop took my info and asked if I wanted to press charges if they found somebody. I said yes and he appeared surprised that I would...I think because he had made it clear that the likelihood of finding somebody was slim, and now somebody would have to investigate further anyway (and this would be months from now due to a backlog of cases). By the time the cops left, it was about 4:30am. My wife and I dozed and watched TV for an hour or two until it was time to get up for work. That night and the next day, my wife and I discussed our actions.
1. Initial reaction. Glass shattering is not a normal house sound at 3am. I should have grabbed the Glock and passed the phone to my wife immediately, then attempted to evaluate the house by listening for intruders while barricaded and phone at the ready. Had the glass broken completely, one or more armed intruders could have been outside my bedroom door in seconds as we were the first door on the right (no hallway...we open into the combined dining/living area). I am not sure if my decision to explore the house first was a product of my being asleep 5 seconds ago...I did feel wide awake and the adrenaline was starting. I am concerned that my wife's exclamation of "what was that" combined with my spidey-sense hinting that it was possible that something could be amiss was not sufficient to compel me to grab gun and phone. I didn't even think of them. It is almost as if I forgot they were there.
2. House exterior. My wife and I are penny pinchers. We never turned on the porch or patio lights. In fact, the light by the garage/backyard gate was burned out. We didn't even know how to turn on our backyard security light. When our neighbors turn on their security lights, they light up our front and backyards (we are a ranch, our neighbors are both 2-story homes). We failed to notice that they had stopped using their security lights...possibly due to hard economic times. Unlike most of our neighbors, we park both our cars inside our garage. We keep the blinds closed at night. We have no lights on inside the house when we sleep. In retrospect, it is likely the intruder thought the house was vacant or its occupants were on vacation. Other factors: the gate to the backyard was not locked though there is a place for a padlock. The gate opens to the side of our house where there are no windows (on our neighbor's house) facing our house. An intruder can enter our backyard unobserved. The area behind our backyard is a drainage area that is overgrown with vegetation. It is not hard to scale our fence due to electrical boxes on either side of the fence...you can climb onto one, leap the fence, and land on another.
3. Weapons Handling. When the cops arrived, I put my Glock away and told my wife to safe her 24/7. She said she could not. She handed it to me to try and the lever would not move to safe. I turned on the light and saw that the pistol was not in full battery. In the excitement of the moment, she had rode the slide forward while chambering a round, and the round had not chambered properly. It was slightly nose up so the gun was not in full battery. It would not have fired if she needed to use it.
We had a lot of sleepless nights as we packed up that week. Was it criminal mischief? Did some kid do this on a dare? Did they do it in revenge for some perceived slight? Or did a burglar find an occupied house rather than an unoccupied one? Perhaps the intruder was unwilling to give more warning to me and the neighbors by re-throwing the brick to break the other pane of glass. More ominiously, maybe they were testing our alarm system (we don't have one or a dog, but we do have a security system sign outside our front door) or they were testing the cops' response time. (I am happy they arrived so quickly...perhaps it would deter someone who was watching...especially if they thought we had an alarm system. By the way, according to the cop, break-ins in our area tend to be smash and grabs during the day when people are at work. They come in through the sliding glass door and ignore the alarm--just grab what they see and get out within a minute or two before anyone can respond).
In any case, we had to prepare for the worst. We fixed our lights and learned how to use them. We told our neighbors to watch out for each other. Since we were moving in days and did not care about how the house looked inside, we placed boxes in front of windows and doors so anybody who tried to get in would have to deal with a maze of obstacles while we barricaded.
We also started thinking about the house we would be moving into. We will have an alarm system. We will use our existing exterior lights and add motion-activated security lights. We have a neighborhood watch and already have relationships with some of our neighbors. The house itself is deep inside a development that is difficult to escape from without being seen. The phone will now be beside my wife's bedside. My wife will spend more time at the range with her 24/7.
We sleep better now but will never forget the shocking noise of shattering glass at 3am.
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glad I didnt shoot them kids, I sure would have felt bad as I did that stuff way back in the 60s when I was a kid.
