I'm reviving a thread here. Tonights incident defines why you should lock your doors.
My wife, son and myself were sitting on our couch looking at photos with our neighbor across the street and her baby. Wife and neighbor could see out the window to the street, and commented on a car outside that did not belong to a house in this neighborhood. About a minute later, somebody tried to open our front door, not knock on the door, OPEN THE FRONT DOOR. I jumped up and grabbed the latch to the deadbolt (which was locked, as usual), and held it in the locked position and blocked the door with my body. The young male outside tried a second time to open the locked door as I asked who was there, and he responded "I'm here for Mike". A little confused by the situation, I asked again who was there and his response was the same the second time, and I noticed from the peep hole he was looking at the door, behind him, and at the door again. I responded as firmly as possible that Mike wasn't here, but noticed that he was still standing at the door. As firmly as possible I again said that Mike was not here, and he finally turned and left the neighborhood.
I'm not convinced that this was a home invasion attempt, but this fellow tried to come into MY house without permission, while my family was here, looking for someone who does not live here. I have a feeling this was a young punk, maybe intoxicated, who mistook this house for one of this friends. Maybe I'm jumping the gun on posting this here, but things would have gotten very frightening quickly if my door was unlocked and this fellow came in through my front door.
The good things are that a) the door was locked, b) I was armed (IWB), and c) the young punk left.
Still a little shaken, even though this occured 2 1/2 hours ago. One thing I'm happy about is my wife asked what she should do in a situation like this if I'm not home. I hope my response was correct, I told her to grab our son and run to the bedroom, get her handgun, and call 911 and report a "home invasion in progress". I'd rather let the sheffif's deputy ask the guy why he's trying to come into my house than my wife ask him why he's there.
Keep them locked folks.
JLaw
Diode, I'll probably come by to your shop tommorrow to talk to you.
1,000%! Front door is deadbolted all the time and the rear sliding door is always pinned. I'm happy to say it's become habit with not only me and my wife, but also our son. I agree about not wanting then getting through the front door. My opinion, because of our lifestyle, is that my family is most likely to encounter danger at home (via invasion, robbery, etc) so we keep the house locked at all times.