This past weekend we had two friends, Duane and Jan visiting from Amsterdam and on Friday we had been out being touristy.
Friday night, Duane was not feeling well so he went to bed right after dinner. The remaining 3 of us stayed up and watched VEEP. At 9:30 I took the dogs out and then put the car in the garage. The lights in the entry were way were off so I must have locked everything up for the night.
A bit after 10 pm I went to bed, Jan and Carl stayed up to watch another episode of VEEP. I was in bed surfing, the dogs were in the room with me (Folsom on his bed on the floor, and Sierra up on the bed with me and they were both asleep.) When the show was over Carl dropped all his stuff into the room and then went into the bathroom to brush his teeth, shutting the door. Jan had gone downstairs to get ready for bed himself. Carl could not have been in there more than 5 minutes, he opened the door and then started shouting “who the fuck are you, get out of my house” and took off running.
I jumped out of bed and ran after him. He’d run out the front door, Sierra running after him and was down the street almost to the top of the hill. I could hear him wheezing from his asthma. Sierra came right back to me and Carl yelled at me to call the cops, we had just been broken into. Jan who was downstairs until Carl shouted and ran out of the house never heard any noise from the thieves either.
I phoned the police and they said someone would be there quickly, and they were. The first responder was a guy with a canine unit who walked around the neighborhood to see if he could find them and checked on our neighbors home.
Carl’s old laptop was stolen out of the living room, his Blackberry was stolen as well. My wallet had been gone through, but nothing taken except 20SEK and the box of change that we had on the secretary was missing, all full of 1 SEK coins. They could not have been in the house long at all. As the perps ran away from Carl they dropped his laptop.
The police came (they were cute) and took our statements and Carl’s BBY number. Sierra, was chewing something, and it appeared to be gum. The cops collected it as all we could think was that one of the theirs had spit it out when they ran out. Thirty minutes or so after the police arrived, another group of police knocked on the door, and they had found the box of change. The thieves has dropped it in one of our neighbors driveway. The police picked it all up and brought it back to us, keeping the box to dust for fingerprints. Later we realized that a bottle of Vodka and a bottle of wine was missing too.
Saturday morning I want to the hardware store and bought some items to help me secure the house and installed them right away. We make sure we double and triple lock everything now. All of that helps but we are still shaken by the fact that these individuals were able to get into our house, while we were home without us knowing it. That is really damn scary. Apparently we are the 5th or 6th house in the neighborhood this has happened to, though that doesn't make it any easier.
We no longer feel safe in our own house. It creeps me out to go downstairs at night to make sure everything is locked up without having to turn on every light, afraid of what might be around the corner. Today, Monday was the first time I have been alone in the house since this happened, and even on a sunny day if I hear a noise, or one of the dogs start barking and I can't immediately see the reason why, the hair on my arms stand up.
This feeling will pass, I know it will but until then it feels really weird.
