Clinotus
12-22-2008, 12:26 AM
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How many wrong steps go here?
My wife relayed to me the other day that her co-worker was overwrought with anxiety over the discovery that the home next to them was not an average suburban home, but instead a Halfway House.
One week later the co-workers husband answered the door to a gentleman who introduced himself as a parole officer, after a few moments of polite conversation the officer inquired as to the state of children and following that, the ages of said children in their household. The questions came from the concern that a registered sex offender was being placed into the Halfway Home.
Two days later with the entire family home, the husband leaves the co-worker and the two young children alone while he runs a few errands. There is nothing amiss, but a few moments later the doorbell rings.
She gets up, locks the back door, makes her way to the front door, locks it, and asks through the door just who it is. The person on the other side of the door states that they are 'Juan, from next door' and his intent is to tell her that he is a sex offender and that he is living next door to them.
Her curiosity gets the best of her, as she desires to see his face...and she opens the door a crack.
There is no tragic end to this story, she met him, shared some face time and thus ends this tale. But does it?
We can take a look at this to see so many things that went wrong, we can see the things that could have set the stage for a horrific crime such as the story last year of the home invasion that left a mother, her two young daughters tortured and dead and a husband beaten by the criminals and the cruel hand of fate.
The first thing that comes to mind is that they were not aware of their neighborhood and this story seems to highlight that struggle for privacy versus that shared front of a community when your homes are so close together that you can wave to your neighbors five feet from your driveway.
You don't need to be a community organizer to know the people in your community, nor does being neighborly mean you need to be nosy, it just means that you know your neighbors and can spot something out of the ordinary. This family's mistake was they never did the research prior to their purchase of the home. They got the home, moved in, and kept to themselves never really paying attention to the revolving door or the shady characters of the home 25 feet from their own.
When the knock came in the AM, The co-worker locked her back door and then locked the front door. Needless to say, things aren't like they used to be, and doors should be locked at all times. You can almost sense her foreboding in the retelling of the story as she took the time to lock the back door and then the front door, its as though her subconscious was attempting its best to advise her...but she started to listen too late.
And the biggest area: Her curiosity. She could have spoken through the window, or through the door, but instead she placed herself into a dangerous situation by opening the door and not just to a stranger, but to someone who had had a past that put him in direct confrontation with her keeping her kids safe.
I can't offer a spin on how a firearm would have helped, thwarted, or saved the day. But I can certainly put forth that there is a lot to be learned here and its all part of the mental game of survival.
How many wrong steps go here?
My wife relayed to me the other day that her co-worker was overwrought with anxiety over the discovery that the home next to them was not an average suburban home, but instead a Halfway House.
One week later the co-workers husband answered the door to a gentleman who introduced himself as a parole officer, after a few moments of polite conversation the officer inquired as to the state of children and following that, the ages of said children in their household. The questions came from the concern that a registered sex offender was being placed into the Halfway Home.
Two days later with the entire family home, the husband leaves the co-worker and the two young children alone while he runs a few errands. There is nothing amiss, but a few moments later the doorbell rings.
She gets up, locks the back door, makes her way to the front door, locks it, and asks through the door just who it is. The person on the other side of the door states that they are 'Juan, from next door' and his intent is to tell her that he is a sex offender and that he is living next door to them.
Her curiosity gets the best of her, as she desires to see his face...and she opens the door a crack.
There is no tragic end to this story, she met him, shared some face time and thus ends this tale. But does it?
We can take a look at this to see so many things that went wrong, we can see the things that could have set the stage for a horrific crime such as the story last year of the home invasion that left a mother, her two young daughters tortured and dead and a husband beaten by the criminals and the cruel hand of fate.
The first thing that comes to mind is that they were not aware of their neighborhood and this story seems to highlight that struggle for privacy versus that shared front of a community when your homes are so close together that you can wave to your neighbors five feet from your driveway.
You don't need to be a community organizer to know the people in your community, nor does being neighborly mean you need to be nosy, it just means that you know your neighbors and can spot something out of the ordinary. This family's mistake was they never did the research prior to their purchase of the home. They got the home, moved in, and kept to themselves never really paying attention to the revolving door or the shady characters of the home 25 feet from their own.
When the knock came in the AM, The co-worker locked her back door and then locked the front door. Needless to say, things aren't like they used to be, and doors should be locked at all times. You can almost sense her foreboding in the retelling of the story as she took the time to lock the back door and then the front door, its as though her subconscious was attempting its best to advise her...but she started to listen too late.
And the biggest area: Her curiosity. She could have spoken through the window, or through the door, but instead she placed herself into a dangerous situation by opening the door and not just to a stranger, but to someone who had had a past that put him in direct confrontation with her keeping her kids safe.
I can't offer a spin on how a firearm would have helped, thwarted, or saved the day. But I can certainly put forth that there is a lot to be learned here and its all part of the mental game of survival.