A close call

Today, while I was working, I heard someone ring my doorbell. At first I ignored it, but shortly afterward, he rang it again. I wasn't on a call, so I went into "personal" time, thinking I'd check and see who was at the door, even though I don't expect anyone during the day. I looked out the window to see if I recognized the car outside my house, but there was none. I did see a male walking across the front of the house, appearing to be talking to the person at the door, as if motioning for that person to walk with him. I guess the person at the door said something, because this male started to approach my house, while the person at the door rang the doorbell some more.

At this time, I realized something was not quite right, as the person at the door continued to ring the doorbell several times, wait a minute, and then ring the doorbell again. I knew that I didn't recognize the person I'd just seen outside my house, so I figured I probably wouldn't recognize the person at the door either.

I tried to call the police officer who works on the high school's grounds to see if she would be willing to drive by or something. I wasn't able to reach her. So I tried calling the local police department, and they encouraged me to call 911.

By the time I started speaking to a 911 dispatcher, the doorbell ringing had stopped. I grabbed my cell phone out of my office and took it with me into my bedroom, locking the door behind me. I was informed that an officer was on his way to check it out. While talking to her, I heard glass break and reported that. Then before long, our call was cut short. I realized the line went dead, and I grabbed my cell phone and called 911.

Before long, there were SEVERAL cop cars in my area and a helicopter overhead. One suspect was apprehended and I was driven in the back of a cop car to see if that was the person I saw. It wasn't. Shortly after being driven back to my house, I was asked to look at another suspect. It was not the person I'd seen either. Then a K9 unit was brought in to try to find the suspect. He's still at large right now, as far as I know.

The suspects broke a window that goes into our garage. That was the glass I heard. They cut our cable and phone lines outside, which is why the phone went dead. I also lost my Internet connection and had to call the on-call phone for work to let them know what happened, since without phone or Internet, I would not be able to work or to let anyone know I would not be able to work. I spoke with a supervisor there and told her what happened (or rather, what was happening at the moment). Comcast and Qwest had GREAT customer service today and both sent someone to our house already today to fix the cut lines (this incident happened about 4 hours ago, and I called them probably about 3 hours ago).

While the police were here, they guessed the lines might have been cut because the suspects wanted to disable an alarm system if we had one (we do, but it's not set up at the moment- we're definitely going to do that now!). But one officer said that it is a group of teenage boys. They look for houses they think are empty and bust in a door. He thinks that it is some of these teenage boys who came to our house and the doorbell ringing was to make sure no one was here (but I'm still glad I didn't answer the door because who knows what would've happened). Anyway, he was saying that he has never seen cut wires before, and he thinks that maybe they heard me on the phone with 911 and cut the wires because they were concerned about me contacting the police.

Either way, I'm glad I got out of it with only some cut wires and a broken window (and a few hours lost pay at work and me being really shook up).