The following is from Jennifer’s (my wife's) perspective…
My Journal Entry of Jan. 30th, 2005. I do not intend to put just dramatic experiences
in my journal, in fact, I intend to put mostly my feelings on higher things
as well as normal everyday experiences in here, but this one is deserves
to be remembered for posterity.
We started out the new year with a 100 year flood. We were evacuated from
our home, but we were able to move back in a day later. Luckily had 72-hour
kit
available and ready, but if it would have been longer, we were ill-prepared
for this situation. No plan, no shelter, etc.
The sewer lines were broken due to the flooding, so they capped our sewer line
and the city pumped it daily. Last week I woke up Tuesday morning at 4:45 am
and smelled something funny. I went downstairs and stepped into 2” of
sewer water all over the basement floors. 2000 sq. feet of sewage. Wait-----It
gets better or you could say worse!
I hadn’t slept very well all week and was getting up several times
a night to check the drains down in the basement. Friday night our neighbors
called us to go to a late show. We left our oldest daughter to baby sit, and
our son was on his way home from his friends to help her. When we got home
at 11:30 or so, the back door to our house in the garage was open a little
bit and we really didn’t think much about it. We figured our son hadn’t
shut it tight when he got home. (we live in a very small town with literally
zero crime. Our two oldest children were sleeping in our master bedroom and
the other four were upstairs in their beds. So we woke up the kids and sent
them upstairs to bed. My husband and I got ready for bed and went to sleep.
At about 2:30 AM, my 7 yr. old came down stairs because she had had a bad dream.
I told her she could sleep on the couch in my room. I heard her go back upstairs
about five minutes later. I was awake somewhat so I got up to go check the
drains downstairs so I could have some piece of mind and be able to go back
to sleep. I came back to bed and my husband was snoring, but it sounded kind
of funny. I moved over closer to him and realized that the snoring wasn’t
coming from him but from under the bed. I told my husband that one of the kids
must have came down and fallen asleep over on his side of the bed. He was unresponsive,
he sleeps very sound. I got up in the dark and felt under the bed and I was
shocked to feel a full size big body instead of one of my tiny kids.
I somewhat calmly told my husband that it wasn’t one of our kids. This
woke him. I can't say why I was calm except for the fact that perhaps angels
were watching over me. I went over and turned on the lamp and looked under
the bed. There was a big man sleeping under the bed. I whispered with some
serious intensity, “Roger, there is a man under our bed!” My husband
immediately got out of bed and looked under the bed also. For a minute we thought
it might be one of our son’s friends. Not thinking real clear at 3 am.
He has two 14 yr. old friends that are pretty big. My husband ran upstairs
and pulled my son down to our room and he looked under the bed and our son
informed us that he had no idea who that was sleeping under our bed.
I immediately dialed 911 in the other room while my husband was grabbing his
shot gun from the closet. He cocked his shotgun and looked in the chamber and
it was empty. Because we have kids in the house, he usually keeps it empty,
but has the shells nearby. He ran into his closet to grab his shells and they
weren’t there. Realizing his gun was nothing but a big whoppin’ stick,
he told me to watch the man while he ran to get shells in the garage. He didn’t
find them in the garage and realizing that he just left me with an empty gun
on an intruder, he grabbed a golf club and came back into the house. (He told
me later he had picked out his four iron first and thought, I never hit my
four iron very good so he grabbed his nine iron instead.)
Anyway, the sheriff showed up within 10 minutes of me calling 911. He came
in and shined his flashlight under the bed and turned to us and said, "you
don’t know this guy?!” We said, “Nope.” He looked at
us with amazement and then took out his Taser and undid the holster on his
gun. He then woke him up, handcuffed him, and started searching him. He started
pulling out a bunch of drugs, meth, pot, pipes, [drug weighing] scales as well
as my ' wallet, checkbook, cell phone, keys to our Suburban and a .99
cent
pen of my
daughters that had a bunch of shiny beads on it that looked like diamonds and
rubies (that is, it looked like that to a guy that was wasted on drugs), and
a hand gun. You can not imagine the scene of seeing the cops arrest a 170 pound
drug lord under your bed at 3 am after you realized you slept with
the guy there for 4 hours.
Apparently, our son didn’t lock the side door to our house when he came
in, and he and his sister fell asleep in our master bedroom about 10:30 or
so. The guy comes into our house at about 11:15 or so. We arrive at 11:30 and
he gets scared and jumps under our bed. We come in and get the kids to bed
in their rooms and we get undressed, brush teeth and jump in bed. We talked
for about 10 minutes. He was going to wait until we got to bed before he made
his getaway, but he fell asleep before he could make his getaway.
We are so lucky that the kids were ok, I mean, he literally had to step over
our son as he was going thru our stuff in the bedroom. Anyway, we were blessed
to escape completely without harm, he is really lucky he didn’t wake
up to my husbands nine iron, the cops had one of the easiest arrests ever,
the guy was prone, asleep, under our bed, in our house, with all the stuff
he stole from us in his pocket with all of his drugs. The guy apparently had
two outstanding warrants for arrest for breaking and entering.
I know the "what ifs" are endless to think about. But, there are
some basic "what ifs" that do not take much imagination. What if
the turning on the light would have awakened him? He has a gun, we have an
empty shotgun and a 9-iron. What if our kids were awake when he broke into
our home?
Some observations: An empty gun is worthless, it will never save your life.
We owned no rifle and no handgun. We have no training. We had no dog and
no security system. We have purchased a rifle and handgun now and put in
a security
system. We got a dog. We need training. The situation presented to us would
have been much less stressful and less out of control if we would have had
front sight training and the appropriate weapons to protect ourselves. Our
oldest two children would have been safer, if awake, if they would have had
front sight training and so forth. We are lucky it turned out to happen the
way it did, but you can't base your life on luck, you need skills for every
situation, skills are the answer, from gardening to weapons training, skills
are the focus of our family now. We were so vulnerable.
We talk about protecting ourselves, our preparations, our fuel, our shelter
and our food for TEOTWAWKI, always in the future tense, but we are seeing
more and more situations every day and year that make me believe that TEOWAWKI
happened
sometime in the late 1960s and as we have lost skills, become spoiled people
dependent on fragile infrastructures, accepted crime and immorality as something
we just have to live with, and all this has crept in, in an amazingly subtle
way as we have slowly and sometimes quickly lost essential skills and freedoms.
- R. in Utah
JWR Replies: This article underscores te importance of having both
the tools and the requisite training needed to survive in
an uncertain world. I highly I recommend
that SurvivalBlog readers take advantage of Front
Sight's "Get a Gun" training and gear package offer. It is worth
flying across the country to take Front Sight's Four Day Defensive Handgun
course. The
Memsahib and I have both taken it, and it outstanding.
