Bad Neighbors

There was a shooting a couple miles from my house early Friday morning. Initial reports were that a guy shot three of his neighbors. I could empathize since I’ve had some tension with my neighbors before. Secondary reports were that the shooter-neighbor may be a bit of a nutjob. Now I’m on the other side since I’ve got a crazy neighbor that I’m mildly concerned about, too. Paper this morning tells a much more interesting story.

The guy is Jeffrey Devries, a retired USF campus sergeant, and apparently he does have a screw loose. He’s paranoid that his neighbors are out to get him. Once he claimed that his neighbors were using “transponders” to send the voice of Stephen King through his electrical wiring. Officers have been called to his house eight times this year, but have never found evidence to back up his claims.

So at 2am Friday morning he sees four people on his front doorstep with torches and he starts shooting through the door. He didn’t kill anybody, but he wounded Samantha Sipka, 16; Jason Biaso, 19; and Mark Hoover, 46. Miles Bailey, 23, was also with the group by was not injured. They claim they were on the street. No explanation was given for the torches.

Devries barricaded himself in his house when the police arrived and kept the local SWATties entertained for about 7 hours until he surrendered, whereupon he got shot with a Taser and some rubber bullets for his trouble.

In addition to the strange conglomeration of ages and last names (and who hasn’t carried a tiki torch at 2am?), the story takes a turn when police find physical evidence that these people were on his porch when Devries opened fire, and one of them confessed it when presented with the evidence.

So WTF was going on here? I guess just because you’re paranoid…

The best part is, I bet this guy doesn’t even get charged, at least not with the shooting. He’ll probably get a “resisting arrest” or something for the standoff, and maybe an “improper discharge of a firearm”, but my interpretation of a law recently passed in Florida is that a person is no longer required to flee, but can shoot first when threatened on his own property.

Teenage Jackass

I can see that the 14-year-old boy across the street is going to be a pain in the ass. The hippie parents are sorely in need of some backbone to whip this kid’s ass before it’s too late.

He had a couple buddies spend the night last night and they were outside being a nuisance until well after midnight. They must have snitched a couple bottles of Bud Light from somewhere because they put the empties out in the street for cars to run over. Jackasses. At one point I looked out the window and saw the neighbor kid walking from the corner of my house back out to the street. He was probably pissing in my bushes.

My wife wanted me to call the cops, but I’m a little hesitant to get that started. I’m sure they get an earful across the street when hell breaks loose in my house and the windows are open. Last thing I need is those hippies reporting us for child abuse. The local cops are good ole boys and I’m sure they’d understand, but I don’t even want to go there.

Next time I see the dad I’ll tell him to keep his boy from snooping around my house in the middle of the night. It isn’t good for his health.

The Crazy Neighbor

I was out of town a couple months ago and got a call from my wife late at night. She had been awakened by a loud banging sound. Eventually she located the source as a woman at the house behind us. There is a privacy fence between the houses, so she couldn’t see real well, but she could tell there was a woman pacing back and forth on the pool patio, had some sort of stick in her hand, and seemed to be muttering and banging the windows and sliding glass doors hard with the stick.

My wife watched this for a little while and wondered what to do. We’ve never met whoever lives behind us. Except for the occasional light on at night we have no evidence that anyone even lives there.

While my wife watched, the woman gave the kitchen pass-through window a particularly good whack and it broke. The woman stopped and picked the glass out of the window frame, the crawled up on countertop and into the kitchen. It was then that my wife realized that the woman was completely naked.

She called me to relay the story and ask what she should do. She was tempted to call the police. After getting all the details, I found the story amusing and convinced her that it wasn’t necessary. The woman probably went out for a midnight skinny dip and locked herself out. My sliders have mysteriously locked behind me before. Besides, how many naked female burglars can there be?

Asking around the next day, my wife learned that the woman behind us is named Nancy and she is a loon.

That was months ago. We’d never seen Nancy before and we haven’t seen her since. It doesn’t even appear that the window has been fixed. It’s nice to have such a quiet neighbor, but kinda creepy at the same time.