Friend’s Home Invasion

My friend had his home invaded this morning, so I asked him to write it up and e-mail it to me. Here’s the story:

This morning, approximately 10:30am, we were awoken by a large amount of noise emanating from our living room. We sleep with the door closed in order to keep the cats, so it wasn’t immediately obvious what was going on. It seemed like far too much noise to be the cats simply misbehaving.

As we slowly came to, we could hear someone very obviously running around in our apartment. He kept saying to the cats, “It’s okay, it’s okay!” We first thought it might be one of the apartment workers, come to check it out for whatever reason, though that didn’t make a lot of sense as they’re supposed to give prior warning.

We began to search around for clothes, as we sleep nude, but before we could find anything, our bedroom door opens and in comes a man. He’s covered in blood, and collapses onto our bedroom floor. We start yelling at him, asking him what the fuck he’s doing in our apartment.

He first tells us he’s been in a car accident, and the police are here. This leads us to wonder why he’s in our apartment, on our bedroom floor, when the police are present. He then begins asking us to hide him from them. He pulls out a handful of crumpled up bills, whatever he had in his pocket, offering it to us to protect him from them. At this point we begin to continually yell, “GET OUT!” at him. Then, he does the unthinkable, sending us over the edge.

“I am a firm believer in Jesus Christ and -”

That was all it took. We immediately scream at him, “WE’RE NOT!” and are provoked into action. No Christian on the lam is going to invade my apartment, by Darwin! I reach over to the side of the bed and grab my sword, a cheap $20 katana I bought from Amazon a few years ago.

He begins to back off a bit, but is continuing to plead. I advance, in something of an iaijutsu pose, sword sheathed at my side. Every time he stops backing up, I draw the sword, just far enough from the scabbard to smash the butt of the hilt into him. He is bleeding all over our apartment now.

Christina, meanwhile, runs to the sliding balcony door and sticks her head out, yelling to the police, “He’s in here! He’s in here!” They approach the apartment, yelling at him to come out with his hands up. He looks at me pleadingly, and I give him another jab.

Finally, he gets to the threshold of the apartment, and refuses to budge any further. My repeated strikes with the hilt are no longer incentive enough to get him to leave, so I take the next step, and begin to draw my weapon. I hold the sword in front of me and begin to slowly unleash it from its scabbard, steel blade glinting in the sunlight sneaking in from the blinds. He panics, and begins to run around in a little circle, not sure whether to take his chances with the fully nude hairy man drawing a sword with his best Full Metal Jacket style war face on or with the police outside. After hesitating for a moment, he makes his choice.

The next sound heard is the electric rip of the police tasers, a noise made famous by YouTube “Don’t Tase Me, Bro!” videos. The guy is outside of the apartment now, screaming, and we scramble to throw on some clothes. By the time we exit the apartment there’s no one immediately in sight, but rounding the corner of the building I see police running around searching for him. Helicopters are now buzzing overhead, searching. I yell to a plain clothes officer that he was hiding in our apartment, telling him what number, and we go back inside to calm down the cats.

A little while later, two officers show up and take our statement. They take DNA swabs of the blood smeared on the walls and floor, pictures of our apartment and my sword laying on the ground where I had dropped it when I put my clothes on. The officer we’re with is informed that they have apprehended him after he was bitten by one of the canines they had tracking him. We each hop into a different cruiser and are driven into the trailer park next door where we both make positive IDs on him as he is treated for his dog bite wounds.

Apparently, from what the police gathered from reports of other witnesses, he got into a major car accident on the main road that our apartment complex is on. For whatever reason, he fled the crime, on foot, and ran into our complex. According to the police, he was in a garage door installation truck, and they think he used one of his tools to unlock our door and get inside based on what one of the witnesses saw.

I’m quite proud of myself for not freaking out under pressure. Unless, of course, you consider attacking a guy with a sword while you’re naked freaking out.

I don’t really know what would have freaked me out more, the katana or the sight of my friend naked. Given the choice, I think I’d take the taser as well.

UPDATE: Here’s the initial story from the media.  No mention of a naked, sword wielding man yet.