As told to Kelly Sickafoose
Early one morning in 2013, I was sleeping soundly in my room when I heard loud noises, yelling, and a crash at the back door. By the time I made it from my bedroom to the back door, a man was laying on the floor. I asked him what he was doing. He began shouting, ‘Call 911! They’re going to kill me!’ He’d dove through my three panel glass door and was bleeding all over my new floor.
So I called 911. The stranger on my floor said he’d been in a car with someone going to Bluffton to buy drugs. He knew the name of the driver and he could describe the car, but I honestly don’t think he had a clue where he was. He said he had been beaten but it was difficult to tell if he actually had been or if the cuts were from coming through the glass door, but probably both. I finally got him off the floor. There was quite a bit of blood everywhere. For some people, it would probably have been terrifying. In my mind, he had no intent on harming me, he just needed help.
I live in a rural area, and it took the police about 15 minutes to get to my house. When the police arrived, they pulled a stun gun on him and handcuffed him. They put up police tape. He seemed under the influence and did not show any resistance. I found later that he had actually hidden a syringe under the rug in the bathroom.
The police had been at the house long enough for neighbors to notice, so a few stopped in to see what was going on. They were very surprised.
I wondered if I would see him again. I’ve been assured that he is not allowed to contact me and he is not allowed to be in the area again. In court, he was charged with residential entry, but nothing was ever in the paper about the incident.
Last spring, there were about three robberies that did make the paper. These were daylight robberies, when no one was home. From what I read in the paper, these were individuals looking for money; they would ransack the homes looking for cash and took nothing else. Sounded drugrelated to me.
It just amazes me how desperate people on drugs get.
This story originally appeared in Facing Substance Abuse, a publication of The Facing Project that was organized by Drug Free Adams County in Adams County, Indiana.