Last Thursday started as an average day, except I was really, really fatigued. I just remember feeling exhausted before I really got going that day.
My wife and I ate lunch late because there was an event at her work that evening and we didn’t really have time to eat dinner before the event because we had to pick up Boy #3 from cross country practice. She grabbed lunch at one of our favorite sandwich places and brought it to me at work. We sat and enjoyed our sandwiches and were feeling pretty good overall.
I wasn’t paying much attention to my phone while we were eating because i was just enjoying the time with her. When I picked up my phone, I had a motion alert for the Florida house. I requested to Squatter put in the Ring before leaving the Florida house back in April. It was just a small thing, plugged in and on the wifi there. It was pointed at the front door, to keep an eye on the place. The Squatter left a lot of stuff in there, just all over the place.
I didn’t think much of that motion alert, or the next one I got as I was looking at my phone because the window just next to the Ring has trees nearby that blow in the wind and cause tons of motion alerts at all times of the day, especially when it’s stormy. But when the next motion alert came, it hit me that weather was fine down in Florida on the panhandle. The hurricane missed that western part of the panhandle by a lot and it was a sunny, calm day. In that instant, I had a feeling that something wasn’t right.
I clicked on that second motion alert that I got while holding my phone and it took me right to what the Ring could see, which was a person in black shorts and short, with a black ski mask on. IN MY FLORIDA HOUSE. It took me a minute to put it all together and I said, “There’s someone in my house in Florida!” My wife leaned over and she saw the masked man skulking around my house too. It was an image that I don’t think I will ever forget. My house, my rug, my stuff, but a stranger in there, lurking. The feeling in my chest is something I haven’t ever felt before. It was a fear I didn’t know could exist.
I texted the Squatter “There’s doneobw in the house.” And then I wrote “someone.”
In that moment that it took me to correct my original error to someone, my brain pulled itself together and I immediately googled the Niceville Police Department and clicked on the number. Someone answered right away and I explained who I was, that someone was in my house in Niceville, and she asked me the address. Once I gave it to her, she informed me that was the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s jurisdiction and she transferred me.
I was then greeted by a dispatcher, who I repeated the exact same information to and she again took the address and continued asking me questions. I told her I had the Ring and she had me go on speaker phone to see if someone was still in the house. At that point I clicked back to the Ring and I saw a curly haired blonde kid and the reflection of someone in a baseball hat. I described everything I saw to her and at that point, the blonde kid looked directly into the Ring and within seconds it went blank. The Ring was disconnected. At that point, I informed the dispatcher who told me not to worry, that the deputies were on-site. She said they would call me back and that was the end of that with her.
A few minutes later, I got a call with a familiar area code. They had apprehended four suspects coming from the backyard with stuff from the house. The deputy asked if he could text me pictures of property for me to identify. He described a few things, all the Squatter’s items – a police plate carrier, a katana, a small sword, several knives, a flashlight, some gloves. When I saw the picture, I knew it was all the Squatter’s stuff. The Squatter had been a cop in Georgia, which is where the plate carrier came from. Then came the pictures of the four kids…I recognized black shorts, black shirt but no mask, blonde kid, and baseball cap. The fourth looked like he had a mask on at some point, but I definitely never saw him in the house like I did the other three.
These were kids. KIDS. That masked “man” probably is about 16 years old at the very oldest. These pictures are what calmed me down over the weekend and helped me get past that image of the masked person in my house.
I sent the pictures to Boy #1, who responded with “Troy and Tommy? What happened?” I told him they broke into my house. He knew them from working at McDonald’s before he moved here. He didn’t like them at all either. He told me that Troy was definitely 18 but that Tommy was pretty young, like maybe 15. And Tommy’s family lives near one of Boy #1’s good friends and that good friend’s mother is friends with Tommy’s parents. But even with all of that, this was just a strange coincidence that it was our house.
I haven’t heard anything back since Thursday night, other than what Boy #1 heard from his friend and mom. Tommy pled out. No news on the others, but it’s 2+ felonies for whoever it is that they’re trying to nab, maybe the only adult, Troy. Bad life decisions were made that day. Imagine getting a felony or two on your record before your life has even really started.
But I have spent a lot of the time since Thursday allowing myself to feel what I needed to feel, learning to live in this post-violation world, and helping the Squatter get to Florida to bring back a truck worth of stuff. There’s just so much stuff. Too much. I glanced through some of what came back yesterday as we moved it into the storage unit. So many remnants of a past life that no longer fits me anymore. Getting through that storage unit will be tough, but so worth it.
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