Power Outage

[stunned_gunner]

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.

[Whitewater]

Is she on drugs?

[OCResident]

Um...wow.

[stunned_gunner]

Originally Posted by Whitewater

Is she on drugs?

Well, I'd heard several stories related to that question. I don't think she was but at the time of the incident we had been divorced for a good 4 years and the only contact I had with her was during custody exchanges. Blood tests after her arrest didn't reveal anything. Of course, I don't know exactly what they tested for either. There were some prescription meds in her purse which may have been an SSRI type medication. I don't know if she was taking it or had stopped taking it.

Regardless, she put some pretty good planning into that night. She had ordered her weapons several weeks earlier and even cached an extra stun gun and pepper spray locally so she wouldn't have to travel with them.

She seemed pretty well organized too. She had popped out the window on the walk in garage door to access the interior lock and then did one of the best jobs of duct taping that window back in place that I'd ever seen. If I'd only knew that she was so handy when I was married to her, I would have had her fixing things around the house :-)

[NSP]

Wow...


You know, most people wouldn't stop when they found out it was their ex...

[SierraNevadaCCW]

I love the part about probation...dress up in a ninja suit..break in to a house ...try turning off the lights...bring along some needles, stun guns and duck tape...you can use in the dark after the power is off .... no biggie...probation should send a message.

This should have hit the local news...where can I find the story to read?

[G30 Steve]

Wow! $170,000,000 seems like pretty high bail for what resulted in a probationary sentence.

[Brian1911]

All I could say after reading that story was That is just flat out scary. I hope you traded you other flash light in for a firearm or in you ex-wife case a silver bullet and a cross, cuase she is one very evil person. I turely hope she doesn't come back for seconds.

[stunned_gunner]

Originally Posted by SierraNevadaCCW

...

This should have hit the local news...where can I find the story to read?

We escaped any news coverage completely. I was glad but I think the detectives that worked the case were disappointed when they saw all the coverage that the NASA astronaut, Lisa Nowak got. The cases were pretty similar, although there were no diapers involved in my ex's case. Instead, three months later when I grabbed what I though was an empty kitty litter bucket in my garage to use to wash the car, I noticed something sloshing around in it. Without thinking I popped the lid off. The smell almost knocked me off my feet.

Yes, while she was waiting in my garage, she left me a present that indicated that she may have been waiting there for a while.

[stunned_gunner]

Originally Posted by G30 Steve

Wow! $170,000,000 seems like pretty high bail for what resulted in a probationary sentence.

That was before they dropped the attempted murder charge. I think there was a recommend bail amount for the 4 felonies she was finally charged with but after the arraignment there was a bail reduction hearing which lowered it to $50,000. Eventually, the DDA offered up a plea bargain for 2 felonies and she jumped at it.

[stunned_gunner]

Originally Posted by Brian1911

All I could say after reading that story was That is just flat out scary. I hope you traded you other flash light in for a firearm or in you ex-wife case a silver bullet and a cross, cuase she is one very evil person. I turely hope she doesn't come back for seconds.

That's what really had me angry. If I had suspected an intruder in my garage but was still in the mindset where I wasn't completely sure, I would have made a more tactical entry to sneak and peek. I would have had an HK and a SureFire light plus the knowledge from prior chemical weapons training that I could still see center mass even when pepper sprayed.

As it turned out 27 or so staples in her head from being introduced to my maglite was the luckiest gift she ever got.

It was tough telling our daughter the high level view of what happened. It would have been far tougher going to her mom's funeral and explaining that situation.

Is it over now? I don't think so. Even the psychologist that evaluated her thought she had some good potential to try it again. Also, there are still some disturbing loose ends in the case that may indicate another person's involvement.

[stunned_gunner]

Originally Posted by NSP

Wow...


You know, most people wouldn't stop when they found out it was their ex...

Yeah, I get that alot

It's still funny too.

Once she identified herself, I was more concerned with scanning for any other threats and the fact that I couldn't see her hands. The bigger problem was that the garage door to the interior was open and undefended. Knowing that stuff can change in an instant, I made a decision to leave her there and secure the door.

What was very interesting to me was that under the stress of the situation, I reverted back to my prior training. It was interesting too to have experienced the difference between pepper spray in a training scenario vs. pepper spray in a real attack. The training scenario didn't really have much at stake. The real attack p*ssed me off and no doubt increased the adrenalin dump. I was thinking who is this a-hole in MY garage spraying sh*t in my face. I knew there was some other objective and I was not going to check out in my garage.

I know I bought some recovery time by creating distance when I initially stepped into the garage. As I was recovering from the initial attack and closing the gap, I was looking up thinking that this a-hole was taller than me. I was probably just not aware that I was crouching in a pretty low stance. (ex is 5' 4" and I'm 6' 1"-- she wasn't wearing heels).

The entire encounter probably took no more than 20 seconds from when I was initially hit with the pepper spray to the time I re-entered the house through the garage door.

I think the real reason that I walked out of that garage that night was that I made fewer tactical errors than she did. I was clueless when I entered the garage. If she had properly executed her plan there is no reason that she shouldn't have succeeded. There are some lessons here that I'm still digesting.

[hbliam]

Originally Posted by G30 Steve

Wow! $170,000,000 seems like pretty high bail for what resulted in a probationary sentence.

Typo I'm thinking. 170K or 1.7M at the most. For instance in LA County the bail would be 1,050,000 for the attempt murder/res. burg arrest and 250,000 for the change to the other four counts.

It's telling that she couldn't come up with the 5K it would have taken to get out on the 50K bail. No friends willing to put the dough up.

[stunned_gunner]

Originally Posted by hbliam

Typo I'm thinking. 170K or 1.7M at the most. For instance in LA County the bail would be 1,050,000 for the attempt murder/res. burg arrest and 250,000 for the change to the other four counts.

It's telling that she couldn't come up with the 5K it would have taken to get out on the 50K bail. No friends willing to put the dough up.

Good catch. Yes that was a typo. $1.7M was the initial bail

[SierraNevadaCCW]

hmmm