The Early Riser: Consequences of an Illusion of Safety

At 3:10 a.m., a Chicago woman arose and went about the process of fixing coffee. It’s not a time that most folks are up and about, but she had a job that required her to arrive early in the morning.

As she set about her activities in the kitchen, she heard noises. Likely because she was up, and because her fiance was in the seventh-floor apartment with her, she didn’t think much about it and continued on with her morning ritual. She would later tell police that she assumed the noises were coming from another apartment in the same complex.

The woman went to take an early morning shower. When she turned the knob and entered the bathroom, instead of the sink, toilet and shower curtain she’d seen a thousand times, she found something disturbing: a stranger. A seven-time felon with bad intentions had climbed seven floors of outside scaffolding and entered her apartment through the unlocked balcony door.

Held at Gunpoint

The shock must have been complete. The intruder’s actions added to that shock: He immediately punched the woman in the eye and sent her sprawling. She fell backward and began fighting with the intruder. Hurting from the criminal’s blow, she yelled for her still-sleeping fiance.

Her fiance woke when he heard the shouts for help and hurried from the bedroom. He rushed to her side and knocked the attacker off his girlfriend. As he grappled with the angry invader, he told his fiancee to go get his gun from the bedroom.

He held the intruder until she returned. Then the couple called the police. The police charged the suspect with home invasion and parole violations. Officers found a number of personal items in his possession that had been stolen from the apartment.¹

Poor Planning

While the outcome for the couple in this incident was fortuitous, there were multiple ways it could have ended very badly. Had the intruder snuck into the bedroom where the couple was sleeping and found the firearm (or had he picked up a knife from the kitchen), you might be reading a different — and more disturbing — story. That would have been especially tragic because there are multiple ways that this could have been prevented.

Looking at this incident objectively, the reason the intruder could gain entry is that the renters failed to consider the possibility that someone could enter through a seventh-floor balcony door. The most obvious way the renters could have prevented the incident was by locking the balcony door or using a dowel to block the transit. Given the violent crime rate in Chicago and the presence of scaffolding outside the balcony, which provided easy ingress, it was completely predictable that someone might well scale the scaffold in search of either property or more sinister takings.

A door lock would have required the intruder to break glass or otherwise create a ruckus to enter the apartment. An intruder who has to make noise to make entry provides his or her own audible warning to occupants and nearby neighbors. In addition, putting an alarm on the door, or using a motion-detector-based alarm system, might have not only scared away the intruder before he could have engaged with the couple but also notified the police.

False Sense of Security

Also disturbing is the lack of an immediate reaction to the noises the woman heard as she worked to get ready. If she had not heard those noises previously at that time of day, proper situational awareness should have led her to retreat to the bedroom and awaken her fiance. But, because she thought herself safe on the seventh floor, her mind allowed her to ignore what should have been red flags.

If your house, apartment, condo or houseboat is in a unique setting (in this case, high above the city), it is easy to assume that you are somehow safe from thieves and miscreants. It is important to remember that, like roaches and rodents, thieves do some of their best work in the shadows after the sun has gone down. These home invaders lurk in the shadows and often rely on a false sense of security to pick their next victims. Every unlocked door — even one seven floors up — is an invitation to criminal victimization.

Untrained Reaction

Equally troubling was the fiance’s untrained reaction. When he heard his fiancee scream, he left the bedroom without his firearm and had to send his fiancee to retrieve it after the fight had already begun. Had the felon been armed with a knife or other weapon, the time between his fiancee going for the gun and her return might have resulted in emergency services having to recover a corpse.

It seems obvious that the couple had not taken any training or given much thought to the possibility of being attacked in their own apartment seven floors above the Windy City. If the couple had taken some training from USCCA Certified Instructors, there is a good chance this defensive encounter would have been avoided completely. If both partners in any relationship get some training and work out a defensive plan for their home or apartment, and if they periodically review that plan and practice those skills, those foundational skills are likely to prevent the exact type of event that occurred here.

Silver Linings

It is important to underscore that in spite of what did go wrong, the outcome was positive, specifically because the fiance was legally armed in one of the most anti-gun cities in the free world. In a fight against a seven-time felon, it is a very lucky individual who can prevail in a physical fight. A firearm as an equalizer is a necessary tool.

Endnotes

(1) “Gun-owning couple detains home invader who climbed into their 7th-floor Loop apartment, prosecutors say,” CWBChicago, Oct. 12, 2022, CWBChicago.com/2022/10/gun-owning-couple-detains-home-invader-who-climbed-into-their-7th-floor-loop-apartment-prosecutors-say.html.