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As the 55-year-old Miramar homeowner prepared to go outside to investigate a sudden power outage, the man's wife spotted someone crouching by the family cars in the driveway.

"Grab your gun," the businessman's wife told him. "Just in case."

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/ ... 3279.story" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

This story is pretty similar to an incident that happened to my sister last year.

At around 11:00 PM I get a call from my sister (who was alone in her house) that her power had suddenly gone out and that the rest of the neighborhood was unaffected, and that just prior to the power going out she heard the neighbors dogs going berserk. She was scared that someone might be trying to break in, so I told her to call 911, she refused saying that if it just turned out to be the breaker box she would be terribly embarrassed and requested that I come over there and take a look around for her (I live 5 minutes away).

So as I arrive there I retrieve my flashlight and Beretta 96 from the glovebox and begin clearing the house with my sister following close behind clutching a kitchen knife, I reach the breaker box in the garage and verify that indeed none of the breakers had been tripped. As I continued to clear the rest of the house we hear the neighbor's dog start barking up a storm, I head to the backyard and see a shadow climbing over the wall, I hit the flashlight and saw that it was a young kid maybe 15 or 16 years old.

As soon as the light hit him he froze for a second and he looked down and saw the laser from my Beretta 96 pointed squarely at the center of his chest, I yelled for him to stop but he quickly scrambled back over the wall and took off running down a ditch that parallels the backyard wall. I quickly scanned the rest of the backyard to see if there was anybody else with him and instructed my sister to call 911. Apparently, in the corner of the wall the kid just jumped over was the main power disconnect switch to my sisters house (Why the developers decided to put it there I will never know) and she was dumb enough to leave it unlocked. So I guess this kid hit the switch and waited to see if anyone would come out to turn it back on, when nobody did he assumed that the house was empty and jumped over the wall.



Needless to say she now has a lock on the power box and has since purchased a handgun for her house and is in the process of getting her CHL.

Our main box is outside as well (most of the houses have them inside). Thankfully the box happens to be right outside the bedroom window so if somebody messes with it I will hopefully hear them. Just to be safe I put a flimsy lock on it as well, this is so they have to make even more noise breaking the lock, not to actually keep them from doing it. The Flimsy lock keeps regular pranksters from messing with it as well.

knotquiteawake wrote:Our main box is outside as well (most of the houses have them inside). Thankfully the box happens to be right outside the bedroom window so if somebody messes with it I will hopefully hear them. Just to be safe I put a flimsy lock on it as well, this is so they have to make even more noise breaking the lock, not to actually keep them from doing it. The Flimsy lock keeps regular pranksters from messing with it as well.

At least the people who built your house put the box somewhere close. At my sister's house the box is on a pole in the furthest corner of the backyard, probably the furthest you can be away from the main house without actually leaving the property.

TXPPQ wrote:

knotquiteawake wrote:Our main box is outside as well (most of the houses have them inside). Thankfully the box happens to be right outside the bedroom window so if somebody messes with it I will hopefully hear them. Just to be safe I put a flimsy lock on it as well, this is so they have to make even more noise breaking the lock, not to actually keep them from doing it. The Flimsy lock keeps regular pranksters from messing with it as well.

At least the people who built your house put the box somewhere close. At my sister's house the box is on a pole in the furthest corner of the backyard, probably the furthest you can be away from the main house without actually leaving the property.

While it is not cheap, the box is not difficult to move to a better location.

Lesson: intruders aren't going to stand where you can see them through the peephole. Find another way to see who's at the door? - a nearby window, webcam, etc.