Tragic invasions

Burglars are criminals and they can be very dangerous, but they tend to be rational people who in general simply want to get in, get your stuff, and get out as fast as they can.  Home invasion burglaries are of course the type of burglary people dread the most, but they are quite rare, because the vast majority of burglars don’t want to enter an occupied dwelling. They might get shot, attacked, cornered, and it ups the ante substantially. I don’t worry about home invasion, because Coco fiercely defends her turf, so if I am home, no rational burglar would ever try to break in.

The problem I most worry about involves irrational burglars, who are either crazy or intoxicated, or people who are not burglars at all. Like this homeless guy who entered the wrong apartment and fell down the stairs.

A downstairs neighbor met him at a liquor store and invited Standridge back to the house to stay the night so he wouldn’t have to sleep outside. The neighbor got drunk then went to bed. He gave Standridge a blanket and pillow and said he could sleep on the couch.

The neighbor said he thinks Standridge was intoxicated and got confused about which apartment was which and mistakenly entered the woman’s apartment. He said Standridge was a nice guy and thought he had “met a new friend.”

The coroner found the cause of death to be consistent with a fall down the stairs, but the body was sent to the Arkansas Crime Lab for more testing.

On one occasion, I was at home and a drunken student simply opened my front door and walked in. Broad daylight on a game day. I grabbed the dog and yelled at her to get out and she acted as if I had hurt her feelings. She had the wrong house, had obviously forgotten which house she had been drinking at, and “came back” to the wrong one. I had the door unlocked as I had been going in and out of the front yard and I was right there.  I learned to start locking the front door more meticulously when I am at home.

A drunken home invasion, of course,  is not a burglary, as burglary requires breaking and entering with intent to commit a felony. So the girl who walked through my front door met none of the elements of burglary. She would at most have been a trespasser — and only if she had stayed after I told her to leave. A homeless guy looking for a place to sleep would not be a burglar even if he breaks in, for sleeping is not a felony.

Aside from drunks coming into the wrong house, there are also people with Alzheimers, who can sometimes come “home” to where they once lived, and might also break in.  If this happened at night, it could prove very tragic for everyone.  Another scenario which might prove tragic would be to return home and surprise a burglar who broke in while no one was there.  While fortunately I never had that happen, years ago when I lived in the Haight-Ashbury, a homeless man broke into my car, opened and ate out of a bag of dog food, drank some antifreeze, vomited all over the car interior, and by the time I noticed him he was peeing all over himself and the front seat. I opened the car door and shrieked “GET THE HELL OUT OF MY CAR!” He looked up with a pitiful expression on his face and stammered “I got…SICK.” He staggered away and only then did I see what had made him sick. Not the dog food — but the antifreeze. My anger turned to pity, and I actually felt guilty about yelling at him. It wasn’t his fault that sick homeless humans who are incapable of taking care of themselves are left to die in the streets because of rights, while sick homeless dogs are taken to animal shelters because of compassion.

The thing is, when you’re faced with the immediacy of an invasion of your space or property, you often don’t have time to reflect on whether or not the invader might actually be harmless.

Avoiding the possibility of your own tragedy has to come first.