Early Saturday morning Vanessa was awake with her nine-month-old daughter when she heard a loud noise in the family’s Langford basement suite.
“Not knowing if someone could hurt your family, it’s just terrifying,” she said.
Vanessa, who did not want to use her full name to protect her family’s identity, initially thought the noise was her husband, who had fallen asleep on the couch earlier that evening, and went to investigate.
The light was on in the laundry room with the door closed so she thought it was her husband grabbing a blanket.
But she heard more crashing and what “sounded like metal falling” so she texted the neighbours upstairs to see if they had dropped something. They thought it was Vanessa’s family making all the noise.
That’s when she heard voices coming from the laundry room and in a panic, called for her husband.
He rushed outside with the upstairs neighbour to investigate and the pair discovered someone inside their laundry room.
Vanessa called 911 and locked herself in the bedroom with her daughter, while her husband tried to keep the intruder contained by barricading the laundry room door.
Vanessa remembers dispatch telling her to remain calm, but she was nearly hysterical, thinking the intruder had a weapon.
“I kept telling dispatch, ‘Don’t let anything happen to my husband,’” she said.
Police entered the basement suite and she heard the intruder yelling “I didn’t do it, I didn’t do it.”
When she came out of the bedroom she said the intruder smelled, very strongly, of marijuana.
She was later told the youth was high and confused. He thought her home was his house and was trying to get in.
With both the front and back doors locked, she figured he saw the window in the laundry room and broke through the screen. But once inside, he couldn’t figure out how to get out.
While trying to get in, he knocked over their barbecue and threw items off the upstairs patio in frustration. Vanessa found his cellphone in the laundry room after he was taken away by police, and presumed the voices she heard was him talking on the phone.
Vanessa said they were lucky their son, who is disabled, was not at home during the incident.
“I’m still pretty in shock that it happened,” she said. “I’m just glad it went how it did, not violent and messy … West Shore RCMP were awesome, they were on the scene within five minutes.”
The West Shore RCMP confirmed a male youth was identified and arrested inside the home.
Vanessa added he isn’t known to her or her family.
While she admitted she’s an anxious person to begin with, both her and her husband are on edge. After police left and as her husband was dozing off, she plugged her phone in to charge, and the slightest sound made her husband perk up.
She added it’s a good reminder for others to be diligent about locking their doors and windows at night.
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