Something bad happened, yesterday. Some person, or persons, unknown broke into my house and stole some stuff, but that’s not the worst of it.
They broke in by literally ripping a couple of side-by-side windows out of their common frame. That was not something that I could fix, and, consequently, I had to spend the night at a motel. Had I stayed at the house, it would have been like staying in a house with no exterior doors. Anyone, at any time, could have pushed the windows back in, again, and gained access to the house.
Whoever broke in took some jars that I had been putting loose change in for several years. I estimate that they got $300.00 to $400.00 that way. They, also, took my meds. There wasn’t any good $#it. Just some over-the-counter stuff, some cholesterol pills, stuff like that. And they took my clothes basket, which, at first, stumped me, and then I realized: they took it to carry their loot in.
It is what they didn’t take that suprised me. They didn’t take my laptop computer, which was in full view on the dining room table. That’s why I think that I drove up into the driveway while they were still in the house. I sat in my vehicle for three, maybe four, minutes, gathering together some things to bring inside. I believe it was during that time they made their escape.
It’s funny what you don’t notice when you’re not looking for it. When I first entered the house, I didn’t even notice the mess that they made. I did notice that the kitchen light was on and remember thinking to myself, “I thought I turned that off.” Then I saw that the house had been ransacked. I went from room to room, looking for where they gained access. It was in the last room that I went into that I saw the damage to the house and the way that they had gotten in.
Naturally, last night, I called the police. A nice officer came out and took a report. He said that another house, in the same area, had been burglarized about an hour earlier. He had been in the neighborhood. In that other burglary, the crooks got a laptop computer, a desktop computer, a computer monitor, and a 42″-screen television. I was lucky.
This morning, I called the insurance company. They had an adjuster call me. He said that they wouldn’t pay for the motel room. He said that the house had to be “uninhabitable” before they would do that. No matter that I didn’t feel safe staying there, with the window ripped out, and all. He said that “uninhabitable” would be the state that a house would be in if a tree fell on it and smashed the roof. Too, he told me that there would be a $500.00 deductable on the repairs to the house. Oh, well.
At least the adjuster arranged for a contractor to come out, today, and apply a temporary fix: he nailed up some particle board sheathing over the windows. Now, it looks like a crack house. At least I can stay in it, tonight.
The felons had messed with a couple desktop computers I had. One of them landed on the floor, along with a flat-panel monitor. When I went to straighten that out, after work today, it became clear that they had unhooked some of the components. Now I had another reason to believe that I had interrupted them, last evening. I believe that they were in the process of disconnecting the components, so that they could steal the desktop computers and peripherals, too.
I doubt that the police will ever catch them. Nothing that they took could be positively identified as being mine, other than the medications. When they realize that they didn’t get any good drugs, they’ll probably throw them away, if they haven’t done so, already.
I took digital photographs of the damage done to the house and the mess made inside. I wanted to document the event, in case I needed documentation for the insurance claim. The photos are still inside the camera. In a few days, after I transfer them to a computer and clean them up a bit, I’ll post some here.
That’s all I have to report, right now. As things develop, I’ll post about this, again.
