Power Outage
It was a Tuesday night back in April 2006 at about 10:30 PM. I had just finished up some last minute things for work and logged out. My 8 yo daughter was in bed sound asleep and I was looking forward to getting into bed early for a change.
All of a sudden the lights went out. I went outside and looked up and down the block. Everyone else seemed to have power. I checked the electric meter and it was running. I came back in and my dishwasher was still running. I noticed that one light in the family room was still on.
I wasn't too concerned because a few months earlier PG&E had a phase problem in the line and half of the house lost power. Since it was raining again I figured this was a similar problem, but just to be sure I went upstairs and found my flashlight. I went back downstairs and opened the interior door to the garage. I took one step in toward the breaker box and some a-hole dressed completely in black hit me in the face, eyes and head with pepper spray.
Damn! That stung pretty good. My eyes snapped shut almost immediately and just on startle reflex, I stepped further into the garage off to the right. As I bent over with my left hand shielding my eyes I managed to catch a glimpse of the person still spraying me. I stood up swinging the flashlight and shouting, "Who are you? who are you? who the [expletive deleted] are you?" But the a-hole never answered. On maybe the third swing I had closed the gap between us enough to connect with a backhand strike to the head. I heard a satisfying clunk and felt the batteries shift solidly in the MagLite. Hooo Yeah! 4 D Cell Mag-Lites rock! A couple more strikes and I felt the person's neck with my left hand. As I was about to do a takedown, the a-hole got a wicked case of rubber legs and went down into a prone position on the garage floor.
I still had my hand on their neck and the a-hole was still moving. I was about to continue the head strikes until the movement stopped when the a-hole spoke. It sounded just like my ex-wife, "Don't kill me. I only came to see [daughter's name deleted]." WTF!
I was in a dark garage. My eyes felt like they were burning, I could only see blurry shapes when I did force my eyes open. I couldn't see my ex's hands. I couldn't see if anyone else was in the garage so I took my hand off her neck and my knee off her back and hurried back into the house, locking the door behind me with the dead bolt.
I went back upstairs into my daughter's room and felt her still asleep in her bed. Then I called 911 and went back down stairs to wash my face.
When the police showed up my ex had, apparently somewhat hastily, departed the scene but left behind quite a bit of blood, most of her disguise, handcuffs, duct tape, steel cable, a stun gun, veterinary syringes, her purse with a wad of cash in it and her and my daughter''s passports She also had used a masonry hammer to hack a hole into my wall! There was a knife slash in the door that I came in through but I never saw a knife or heard the strike to the door and no knife was later recovered.
I was relatively unscathed except for the can of OC she unloaded in my face and a couple of scratches on my left shoulder roughly about the same width apart as the electrodes on her stun gun. Luckily, my daughter had slept though the whole thing.
The police picked my ex up about 90 minutes later, wet, bloody and dressed in black like a ninja trying to get a gas station attendant to call a battered woman's shelter because she said her husband beat her up.
She was booked for attempted murder and residential burglary bail was set at $170,000,000. She was arraigned a few days later. They dropped the attempted murder charge because they could not find the knife but charged her with Residential Burglary - first degree, attempted kidnapping, assault, and attempted false imprisonment--four felony counts. Bail was reduced to $50,000 but fortunately she couldn't make bail and she stayed in jail until she plead to a plea deal. Credit for time served and they cut her loose with 3 years probation.
Maaaan, what a knucklehead!
My 4 D-Cell Maglite was taken as evidence. I picked up a 6 D-Cell Maglite the next day since when the power goes out you can just never tell how long it will be out for and I just might need the extra power from those two additional batteries :-)
Anyway, lots of security posture changes later and here I am.
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