Thursday, March 27, 2014
WARREN
Though it might not seem neighborly, one of Warren’s top law enforcement officials says it makes sense to “assume the worst” when someone suspicious spends an unusual amount of time knocking at your door.
“Always assume the worst,” Capt. Robert Massucci said. “If it turns out to be OK, there’s nothing lost,” he said of a young mother whose house was broken into at 12:21 p.m. Wednesday on Oak Knoll Avenue Southeast after a man rang the doorbell and knocked for roughly 15 minutes.
Police say they have a surveillance video from a store on Youngstown Road that shows the suspect who broke into the house, and they are hoping to use it to capture him.
The woman called 911 at 12:21 p.m., about the time the man broke into the rear door and entered the house.
The 21-year-old woman barricaded herself inside the bedroom with her five-week-old child and told a dispatcher that the intruder had tried turning the handle on the locked bedroom door.
The first police officer was at the house within a minute of her 911 call and four other officers were there another minute later, but the intruder was gone.
Massucci said the woman did just about everything perfectly.
“It sounds like she did what she should do — she barricaded herself in her house and called 911,” Massucci said.