Police: Don’t wait to report suspicious knocking

Staff report

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 not captured the man who committed the crime.

The woman called 911 at 12:21 p.m., about the time the man broke into the house through the rear door.

The 21-year-old woman barricaded herself inside the bedroom with her 5-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 a 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.

A Warren police report suggests she called her husband, a young pastor, while the stranger was knocking, and he got home a short time after the police arrived.

Massucci said his only advice would have been to notify police a little sooner.

Even if the stranger hadn’t committed a crime yet, it helps for the caller to be on the phone with a dispatcher as police respond to the call so they can hear any commotion occurring at the residence while they are on the way and to help gauge the seriousness of the matter.

That way, when police arrive, the dispatcher can reassure the caller that the person trying to get inside is a police officer and to cooperate with him or her.

The couple had moved into the house only recently, having relocated to Warren from out of state.