The first time my house was broken into by a Burglar

Ever wonder what it was like to have your home or house just broken into and how you just narrowly missed being a statistic and not dead for the police to find you laying there and try to figure out what really happened here inside your house.  Well how you handle a break in is very important and the first and best lesson I can give to you free of charge is to not do what I did. It was dangerous and could have ended badly. 

My house was located on a dark and high crime neighborhood. The strange phenomena here was the houses were being robbed or broken into but it wasn’t anybody from the neighborhood and that made it easier to trust your neighbor but never the less, emotionally it gives little comfort to the fact you have been violated and frightened to the point you may want to buy a gun if you don’t already owned one. 

It was a simple two story house. It had windows on the bottom and it had windows on the top. The doors were always locked a night and the screen door had bars on it. The windows were big enough for a man to crawl through but that is never a first consideration when you buy a house. You buy a house with big windows to get the most sunlight you can from outside in these cold Ohio winters. 

I owned a dog but it was not yet old enough to be a watch dog. It was a puppy Doberman Pincher and it was a good dog. She was a loyal faithful companion from the moment I bought her from a friend who had the mother and father. Her name was Mandy and she was a noble breed of a dog. Mandy must have been about four months old when my first break in happened. 

It was somewhere between 3:00 and 4:00 o clock in the morning because the sun wasn’t near to coming up. The family were sound asleep upstairs and the house was secured with every door locked and every window shut. It had to be that way in those days as the crime rate was ridiculously high and the dangers were just as bad. A good dog was the best protection you could have but this was just a puppy so I had to wait till she grew before I had any expectations from her. 

A light sleeper from habits attained in the army, I heard Mandy growl lightly and thought it was her belly growling because she was hungry. I ignored it but then the growl became a little louder and it changed tone. I hushed her not to wake up the others but she kept on growling under her breath and it awakened me enough to lift my head and see this giant of a man standing over my bed inside my bedroom. 

Startled, shocked, scared and wide awake I yelled at him some obscenities as I jumped up scaring him as much as he did me. I chased him down the stairway but he had a good head start and I was barefooted and just dressed in my underwear when he rudely and shockingly awoke me that moment. 

Mandy did her job even as a puppy. She growled when she needed to warn me. I suspect she saved our lives and needless to say, I chased that son of a bitch downstairs with all my speed and as I landed at the bottom of the stairway, I tumbled and saw he was gone. Picking myself up I ran to the backdoor in the kitchen and opened it wide to go outside. Slightly out of breath, I ran to the back gate that had been left open and as I watched a dark tall figure running down the alley I took pursuit barefooted and half naked. 

Realizing I was not going to catch him, I stopped and turned around to go back to the house. Mandy had followed me out but stayed in the yard as I came back to see what damage was done. The strangest thing occurred in my head. When I ran outside I didn’t have to open the back door. It was already open. He must have opened it up from the inside but how did he do that if everything was locked. 

Then it dawned on me. Looking around while still trying to catch my breath, the first thing I saw was my living room window wide open. I concluded he came through the window but when I looked closer I saw my room air conditioner sitting on the ground on the outside of the house still running and plugged in as it must have been easy to remove to gain access to the room from the outside where the air conditioner was. I never realized how easy it was to take out and I had to make sure it would never happen again. 

I didn’t call the police. I knew it would be at least an hour before they came. I didn’t file a police report because I didn’t see anything missing. I found my wallet on the floor where he must have taken it and looked inside but I had no money in it and I never had any credit cards back then. All I had was my driver’s license and maybe some receipts. Not having house insurance and noticing nothing of value missing, I let it go. 

If I hadn’t been in the house he would have taken the television and other things he could pawn for an easy dollar. I knew I would never find the potential thief and prosecute him so it was all a moot point at that moment. All in all my first break in was exciting and frightening at the same time. I reinstalled the air conditioner with some screws securing it so the window would not slide up to gain access to the inside. 

My family and I had to come to terms with the break in emotionally. Just because you didn’t lose anything does not comfort you. A break in such as this creates doubts of safety issues not taken and a violation of your privacy that is hard to deal with. I wasn’t sure I would be safe again if I went back to sleep or any other day. The damage was done but never forgotten. In time, this will heal but I did what I had to do in order to convince myself that my family was safe.