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I received a call Thursday morning from someone who had driven by one of my rentals. Apparently there were a lot of police there, which wasn't that big of a surprise since the rental is on one of the worst streets in town.
I arrived and saw the house and yard was surrounded by crime scene tape, and there was a detective parked outside the house until CSI got there. The front door was open and I could just barely see a guy sitting just inside, on a couch, with his white-socked foot pointing at the opening.
(Rewind for some background)
The man that rented the house from me is in jail and has been for a few days. His son Jeriel (who used to rent this house from me) apparently was using the house. He had hooked up with some girl, and he and the girl and his friends were at the house. The friends went to go somewhere for a while. The son was on the phone with a relative in Nevada when there was a knock at the door. He thought it was his friends, but two armed men came into the house.
The relative in Nevada heard the invasion going down, over the phone, so he called another relative in California, who called another somewhere else desperately trying to find the phone number for a Daytona relative. They finally found a phone number for someone in Daytona, who immediately drove to the neighborhood and flagged down a police officer.
In the meantime, Jeriel is getting the sh*t beat out of him (I saw him Friday after he got out of the hospital, not only was his head swollen and knotty, he had little round cookie-cutter pieces of his cheek missing, where they hit him with the barrel of a gun). After beating on Jeriel for a while, and finding no significant drugs or money, one of the intruders left, and the remaining gunman was leading Jeriel and the girl to the front door. He told Jeriel he was going to put them in the trunk of the car and kill them and dump them.
That's when the officer knocked on the door.
When the door opened, apparently everyone was sitting on couches. After a short conversation with the officer, the gunman pulled the gun and pointed it at his own head. The officer called for backup, and then according to the neighbors, all hell broke loose. SWAT and police were all over the nighborhood. They shot teargas through a window, and eventually heard a gunshot. The dude I saw sitting just inside the door was the intruder, who had shot himself.
Here are some of the pictures - taken Thursday after the scene was released to me in the afternoon.
The house was trashed and reeked of tear gas. Inside, I heard a whimper from one of the bedrooms and found Jeriel's pit-bull puppy hiding under a bed. We take him out and give it to one of the neighborhood guys. I locked up the house and went to Home Depot to get a new window to replace the one that the teargas went through.
So, Friday morning I go back to replace the window and rekey the locks. I walk into one of the back bedrooms to find an a/c unit missing. Turns out it was outside on the ground. Someone had broken in and taken TV's, sneakers, etc. So I called the police to report the break-in. Dispatch tells me an officer will be sent. For the next hour I replace the window, rekey the locks and replace the a/c unit. Still no cop.
My friend comes over so we left to go to a closing for another house I bought and to get some lunch. We come back and immediately see one of the a/c units in the front room is missing. Coincidentally, a police officer pulls up in response to my earlier call. I start to explain the strange turn of events while my friend unlocks the house to find that the a/c unit is sitting inside the house.
This is when Jeriel, fresh out of the hospital, arrives. He says that he had just been at the house and knocked the a/c unit in, looking for his wallet, tv, dog, etc. Some hoochie-mama who happened to be walking down the street (there's a crack-house at the end of the street) came over and was talking to Jeriel. Jeriel leaves to go get his dog from the guy I gave it to, my friend and I are talking to the officer, and the hoochie-mama comes walking out of the house directly to the cop.
She throws a little baggie at the officer's feet. It has a rock in it. She says she found it in the house. The officer, my friend and I are in shocked silence, alternating between looking at each other, the baggie, and the dumbest hoochie-mama east of the Pecos. After what seemed like a minute, I couldn't take it anymore and walked away, shaking my head and silently praying for the madness to stop.
The officer arrests and cuffs the hoochie-mama, who is protesting loudly, not understanding why. My Russian clean-up crew arrives and they toss the blood-soaked couch and all the other furniture out, tears streaming because of the gas.
Tomorrow they'll clean the house, then it's time to repaint, pull the carpet from the bedrooms and tile them, weld some cages around the a/c units, and find new tenants.
Some detectives came by and told me the gunman was what they called a very bad man, with a long rap list. This home invasion would have been his third-strike, and he spent his last minutes on the phone with his relatives. Apparently he did not want to go back to jail.
Also, the girl apparently set Jeriel up. The detectives said her story varied wildly every time she told it, and she was unhurt through the ordeal. The invaders were probably using her as bait, and they struck as soon as Jeriel's friends left the house.
Dude that is nuts. I am so sorry to hear that happened to you. I hope all work out with the new tenants. God Bless You. Later, John
PS: If there is anything I can do, I am off for the weekends, just let me know.
Chiung, who is responsible for paying for all of the clean-up after something like that?! Obviously SWAT did what they had to do, but also caused a good amount of damage in the process.
Home Invasion/Suicide
