And the crime comes home

Friday morning, February 4, at 4:55 a.m., I woke Bob to tell him I heard a weird noise that sounded like someone at our door. Considering that we sleep with the bedroom door closed (because the a/c's on) and a sound machine playing waterfall noise near Bob's head, all I really knew for sure was that this weird noise had woken me up and that I'd heard it again after I was awake.

Bob went out of our bedroom into the dark kitchen/living area. We have a bright light on our front porch, and he could see the silhouette of someone. He saw that this someone had his hand down inside the upper portion of our screen door and was banging on the plexiglass portion of the solid door. Bob yelled, "Can I help you?" a couple of times, and there was no response - but the guy also didn't leave. So, Bob (obviously still partly asleep) opened the front door. Now the guy moved away, but he didn't run, he just walked up the stairs to the sidewalk, and even looked back at Bob as he left - giving Bob a clear view of his face.

By now, I've called 911 to report an attempted break-in and been assured that an officer is en route. Bob threw on some clothes & shoes and walked outside. As he was watching for the police, a young man, obviously very drunk, walked by, and Bob suggested he "get on out of here, the police are coming".

Once the policewoman, Officer Fraser, arrived, things got really complicated. I'll try to summarize. Officer Fraser talked to Bob & me for a minute, then assured us that no one had really tried to break in. Seems she had just delivered a very drunk young man to his condo (#17) from the condos across the bay, and she was sure that he'd just come out again and been confused about which condo was his and tried to get into ours (#23) by mistake. Bob, in turn, assured her that there were 2 different men, as he'd seen the drunk guy, and he was definitely not the same guy. Officer Fraser went so far as to go to #17 and bring the guy out for Bob to look at and also to look at his arms to see if he was scratched up from sticking his arms down past the screening on our door. Bob assured her that the 2 guys were different heights, ages - and races.

Next Officer Fraser called a resident of the condos across the bay and told him to come to our condo. Turns out there had been several car break-ins there (why do people leave laptops & cell phones in their cars?) and this man, Murphy, had been working with her to catch those perpetrators. Murphy had been with her when she brought drunk guy back, and maybe that's who Bob had seen? Again, no.

At this point it apparently really registered with her that there was damage to our door, so she sent Murphy back out while she took an "official report".

In a few minutes, another 2 people showed up at our door. After they introduced themselves as Officer Turnbull and another officer, they joined the party in our condo. They were burglary cops and had come over from the north side of the island. We're still not quite sure why they did so ...

All the officers commented that they were surprised to have anything like this happen in our area. Officer Fraser even said she'd have to start driving into the area, because there had never been any need before.

By about 5:30 a.m., everyone had left, but Bob & I, obviously, were up for the day.

By 8:30 a.m., we had repeated our story to our landlords (who are also our upstairs neighbors), the property manager, 2 of the maintenance men, and the homeowners' association president (who is also the landlord of the drunk young man - for now).

By 2 p.m., the property manager had had a long conversation with the now hungover young man, who didn't remember anything - and was very humiliated to hear what had happened.

We have all come to the conclusion that the two incidents are related. Either the guy trying to get into our door had been partying with the drunken ones, or he had observed them and thought this young man would be an easy mark and had come to our door in error.

Bob & I are very relieved that we had locked the screen door the night before, and that the guy really didn't try harder to get in. We rarely open the side of the door that he was working on, and it is bolted into the ground. He'd tried to push in the screen on the other side, but hadn't been very successful. Had he gotten through that side, he'd have been able to either reach in & unlatch the door or just shake it so hard that it would have come open. And, had he been able to get either screen open, he'd have had the leverage to push through the door.

We also are blessed with very involved and caring landlords. After scolding Bob for opening the door, they scolded both of us for not calling them immediately. Then they got to work on making us more secure. We were able to padlock the wrought iron gates closed by that evening, as a temporary measure. Now, the gates have had a regular keyed lock installed, along with bolts to secure them into the ground. Next, the gates will have screening installed and the old screen doors will be removed. They'd already been talking about doing this for us; this incident just sped up the process.

We still know we live in one of the safest areas on the island, and now feel even more secure in our own home.

Some Local Flavor

Last weekend was pretty busy. Saturday evening, we took the "people ferry" to St. John for Love City Live, the inaugural event of a planned annual outdoor festival/reggae concert.

The first indication we had that it might be an interesting evening was the unusual security the passengers had to go through just to get onto the ferry. There were at least 10 TSA and/or port authority cops plus VI cops and a dog. Bob got patted down (and his collar checked?) and my purse was thoroughly searched - tho I didn't get searched. After we boarded the ferry, we watched and observed that different passengers got different screenings. Everyone (besides us, that is - obviously we didn't look too threatening) had to show id's, and some people were pulled aside and their id's were checked against something on a laptop. The locals didn't seem to be fazed, but Bob and I were intrigued.

The opening bands were okay, though they were local bands, and we had a hard time understanding the dialects. The headliners, Third World Band, are "international reggae legends" from Jamaica. They were due to come on stage at 11:15 p.m. But we're on island time down here, so they didn't actually start playing until 12:40 a.m.! We really enjoyed the music, but decided we'd head for the ferry about 1:15 in hopes of beating the crowds.

We knew that the ferries would be running after the concert and assumed that they would be running regularly until then. We were wrong ... There were a few people waiting for the ferry when we got to the dock - at least one had been there since 11:30 p.m. By 2 a.m., when the next ferry was supposed to leave, quite a few people were waiting and were beginning to get restless. Ferry company and security personnel finally headed for the gates, and the crowd went crazy! As the people seated near the gate lined up, people from the rear of the group started climbing over the benches and elbowing through the line to get to the front. Then a security guy opened the exit gate to let 6 or 8 people in ahead of those of us who were lined up, and we really thought there might be a riot. Luckily, they opened the gate and started letting people through. We were able to get a seat in a fairly secluded part of the first ferry, so the ride was relatively uneventful. Once we were back on St. Thomas, all the intoxicated people got into their cars and drove off - right past at least 5 police officers!


After at least 6 hours of sleep :) we had a quiet Sunday morning before we got ready for my afternoon venture. While I've been running (sloooooowly) for a little while, I've only run one race, a 5K, and I did that with Parker a couple of summers ago. Well, I saw an article in the paper here about the 29th annual Jogger Jam, a 2-mile women's only race to raise money for the Family Resource Center. I figured I could do that!

So, I joined 472 other women and girls for the 4:30 p.m. race. First there were some warm-ups exercises, then we all headed to the starting line. I was close to the front, so you can't see me in this picture Bob took of the group after the start, but you can get an idea of the crowd:

One of the high schools had 125 runners (in the gold tees and maroon shorts), and they all started out in a sprint. It really didn't feel bad to pass many of them as I stayed at a fairly consistent pace :)

While I certainly didn't win any awards, I did finish (in just over 20 minutes) and got to watch lots of the runners and walkers cross the finish line. Everyone was so positive and excited about this run! 

Bob saw one of the women who works in his office, Willa, afterwards, and took a pic of us that he posted in the office:

He even commented that this had been one of his favorite days here, because we felt like a part of the community. That made all my discomfort worth it!