Attempted Break-in

LornaJane

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Sunday, May 11. 2008

Attempted Break-in

Last night we came home at around midnight and disturbed an intruder. Nobody hurt and nothing taken, is the short version.

We got back, walked up to the front door and I decided I needed to water my plants as they were looking at bit sad. So I went up the side of the house to the back to get the watering can while Kevin went in the front door. The back of our house is pitch black at night but I know it well so I just wandered round, right along the back of the house and grabbed the watering can. I then looked around and realised there was something moving in the dark ... something very big. Eventually this heaving shape resolved itself into a man climbing out of my kitchen window at which point I started SCREAMING. Forget panic alarms, I was easily louder than any of those, the whole street must have heard me.

As I was only about 4 feet from the man in question, he must have got a fair fright as well (who wanders around back gardens in the pitch black at midnight after all??). Seems like he heard Kevin going in the front and scarpered back out the way he came in. Of course Kevin, in the house, has no idea what is happening other than there is screaming outside the house ... I can't imagine what was going through his mind when he realised it was me screaming. Anyway I ran back to the front, went in the house and after some total incoherence explained to Kevin what I'd seen. At which point we had no idea if there was still anyone in the house or anything.

I rang the police and our neighbours were also out asking if we were OK, they very kindly helped Kevin check if there was anyone else in the house. The police responded quickly and were very good, which is great. I'm sure they had enough going on on a Saturday night! Anyway the fingerprint people came this morning and got a good footprint from the kitchen counter, which was very interesting as I've never seen them do that before.

To cut a long story short, we are fine, nobody was hurt (although we both got almighty frights), and nothing was taken. The window is boarded up now and we will get it replaced as quickly as we can. It seems like the intruder thought we were upstairs asleep (car on the drive, no lights on, midnight), and it was just very lucky that we got back when we did, there was no sign that he had been anywhere other than the kitchen.
Posted by LornaJane in house at 17:01 | Comments (10) | Trackbacks (0)
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hug What a crap thing to return to. Still, lucky that you disturbed them before they took anything.

#1 dotjay (Homepage) on 2008-05-11 17:33 (Reply)

I can only echo dotjay. I’m glad nothing bad happened.

Rob…

#2 Rob... (Homepage) on 2008-05-11 19:34 (Reply)

Glad to hear you’re not hurt and nothing was taken, but I’m sure sorry to hear about this.

#3 Chris Shiflett (Homepage) on 2008-05-12 04:18 (Reply)

I hope they catch the guy. Seriously sucks!

#4 Ivo (Homepage) on 2008-05-12 08:46 (Reply)

thanks people for dropping by and adding a comment, the support means a lot. I have no idea how likely they are to catch him and I’m keeping my expecations of that pretty low, for now we are just making some practical changes in the house and trying to keep the whole thing in perspective.

#5 LornaJane (Homepage) on 2008-05-12 09:28 (Reply)

Saw your post in the DevNetwork PHP forum, followed it to here. Good thing to hear you and your husband were not hurt. Your message was a wake-up call. Unfortunately tonight my wife and I heard that our sister-in-law’s Internet connection was cut by an angry ex-boyfriend, and we suspect he’s back on the coke after being off of it for many years, so now my wife and I are loading up the .22 and getting ready to prevent a break-in of our own.

#6 volomike (Homepage) on 2008-05-13 00:26 (Reply)

thats rubbish lots of cuddles for you at least you can make necessary changes now :) I hope they catch him but like you say i wont hold my breath… our recent break in they caught the lads in question still with glass on their clothing from our house and they still couldnt charge them! see you soon xXx

#7 Caity on 2008-05-13 11:44 (Reply)

volomike: I think for us it was just opportunism so its not an ongoing worry. Also here in the UK we have a somewhat different approach to the idea of bearing arms and defending one’s property.

caity: I agree they are unlikely to get anyone, basically they’ll only get him if they get him for something else! I was surprised they didn’t manage to press charges with yours as it was pretty obvious who was responsible!

#8 LornaJane (Homepage) on 2008-05-14 10:30 (Reply)

Sounds scary.
How has it effected you in terms of keeping your eye out for unlocked windows when you leave the house, checking the doors are locked before bed time..etc ?

#9 Chloe Edwards (Homepage) on 2008-05-16 22:34 (Reply)

Chloe: it hasn’t made much difference as I’ve always been paranoid about closing windows and I keep the doors locked at all times even when I’m home! They got in by removing part of the window, it was an old-style wooden one so we’re having most of the remaining wooden windows replaced with double glazing. We’ve also had help from the Crime Reduction people who have replaced our front door lock and fitted additional door and window security throughout the house.

#10 LornaJane (Homepage) on 2008-05-16 22:40 (Reply)

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Sree about GeekSpeakr
Fri, 04.07.2008 07:06
This is a good place to know about more & more women speaker s: hers i am: http://geekspeakr.com/speaker/sree


LornaJane about A Turtle and a Giant Baby Blanket
Wed, 02.07.2008 22:10
LinuxJedi: I have a niece to knit for, no need to go to the great lengths of breeding grandchildren :)


LinuxJedi about A Turtle and a Giant Baby Blanket
Wed, 02.07.2008 19:58
Awww….That is really cute. Your stuff just gets better an d better :) Although I have visions of you in a rocking c hair in 60 years time knitting away embarrassing clothes for all you grandkids :)


Ken Guest about Vim Macro: cleaning up line endings
Wed, 02.07.2008 14:28
Lorna, If you’re getting into hooks and coding standards yo u might want to have a look at triggering Greg Sherwood’s ph p codesniffer when somebody attempts to check in changes. http://url.ie/hq6 is a redirect to his blog posting about d oing this.


LornaJane about Vim Macro: cleaning up line endings
Wed, 02.07.2008 13:16
Geoff: For line-endings the SVN property is really useful, but for more complex requirements, like the ones Ken mention ed, a hook is more functional I think. I must admit to usua lly specifying whitespace and line endings in coding standar ds and then shouting at people that do it wrong … it [...]


Geoff about Vim Macro: cleaning up line endings
Wed, 02.07.2008 12:57
Have you tried using the svn:eol-style property? This seems more appropriate than using pre-commit hooks.


LornaJane about Vim Macro: cleaning up line endings
Wed, 02.07.2008 12:11
Ken: Hello, thanks for dropping by and upstaging me with suc h an excellent tip :) I’ve also seen some nice pre-commit h ooks for SVN that cleans up this kind of badness before the files go near the repo.


Ken Guest about Vim Macro: cleaning up line endings
Wed, 02.07.2008 01:23
Hi Lorna. Cool tip but I think I can go one better! I ha ve the following line in my ~/.vim/ftplugin/php.vim file autocmd BufWritePre *.php :%s/\s\+$//e This removes all t railing spaces in a .php file prior to writing it to disk an d means I can concentrate on work rather that using ma [...]


LornaJane about PHP5 Soap Server
Tue, 01.07.2008 22:09
Nik: I can’t imagine what a wsdl would look like pasted into here so I’ve put it in a separate file for you, I’ve includ ed another example soap function so you can see the wsdl wit h two functions and I hope this will give you the help you n eed. The wsdl is at http://web.lornajane.net/sugar_so [...]