Lock Your Doors!
This happened five years ago in Indianapolis, but the lessons are 100% applicable today. A young woman was brutally raped and murdered in her own home at 7:00am by two intruders.
The young woman’s husband left their home shortly after 6:00am to go to a local gym. He told police he left the front door of their home unlocked. When he returned two hours later he found his wife raped and near death, shot in the back of the head. She died before medical intervention could save her. It appears that the perpetrators of this atrocity had just burglarized a home two doors down from the Blackburn’s home.
It is likely that the suspects saw him leave, and just as likely that they saw him fail to lock the door. They simply entered the home and committed their heinous crimes.
There are a number of lessons here. First, no time of day and no neighborhood are “off limits” to violent crime. It appears the suspects in this case had broken into three other homes in the same neighborhood between 5:30am, and 7:00am, stealing money, a laptop computer, clothing and other items. A few years ago, a student of ours was forced to shoot an intruder who kicked in the front door and entered the student’s home at 6:30am. Our student had to transition from getting his kids ready to go to school to shooting an intruder, in just seconds.
Next, lock your damn doors! It doesn’t matter what time of day it is, or that you will only be gone briefly. If an intruder has to break down a door to enter, that gives you warning and time to arm yourself. If they can just walk right in through an unlocked door, there is no delay, no noise to alert you and no time to react. Third, use your alarm system. Again, a burglar alarm won’t keep an intruder out, but it alerts you that you have a problem, making a response possible.
Now, here’s something to think about. In the Indianapolis case, the husband told police he deliberately left the door unlocked. He didn’t want to be bothered carrying keys when he walked to the nearby gym to work out. That combination of laziness and willful naivete cost his wife her life. As far as I’m concerned, he should be charged with Reckless Endangerment, which is exactly what he did. “But I don’t want to live in fear.”, the wide-eyed sheep says. Locking your doors is not living in fear, any more than wearing a seat belt in traffic or having a fire extinguisher in your home is. Locking your doors is simply taking a reasonable precaution against a real and foreseeable threat.
This is a perfect example of a preventable tragedy. Complacency and willful naivete combine to get decent people killed.
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Originally Posted by Jim Watson
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