Two nights ago, I woke up around 1 a.m. hearing a few faint but strange noises outside. (I don't sleep the greatest since becoming a mom plus being 8 months pregnant). We live in a cute, safe, quiet neighborhood where you could almost hear a pin drop at night. It was the faintest of sounds, and I laid there thinking it was an animal or the wind. It was a warm night so our windows were open upstairs. Our master bedroom sits closest to the driveway. I almost rolled over and went back to sleep, but I thought, "No...something just seems a little funny...." So I poke Jason and tell him I hear something outside. He jumps up and looks out the window. It was dark out-our motion detector lights above our garage weren't on. All of a sudden, he yells in this booming, mean voice, "WHAT THE %&!)$ DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?!??!" There were two guys trying to roll our Honda Civic down the driveway! Couldn't believe it! So I'm calling 911, Jason is throwing on some britches, and the two guys take off across the street, through our neighbors yard, jump the fence, and are gone. Jason wants to take off downstairs and I'm guarding the bedroom door saying, "You are not going anywhere, mister!" He's trying to convince me that they are gone but I'm like, "Stupid teenagers do stupid things with stupid guns and you are not going anywhere!" Thankfully, the Shelton police show up in less than 2 minutes and I let him leave the bedroom. :)
The two guys had already gotten into the car, broke the steering column, had it hotwired and ready to go, and were just rolling it down the driveway before they were outta there. Within 1 minute, they would've been gone with our car. A few strange things:
1. Our motion lights didn't go off and they were directly over where they were working. Don't know if they moved them or what.
2. Jason's white work van was parked behind the Civic. So in our double driveway, the red Civic is close to the house with the van behind it. They were turning the car to move it out from in front of the van and get it down the driveway....pretty ballsy.
3. I'm not sure what it was that I heard them doing. They were done working on the inside of the car and were just moving it while turning the wheels. It was just the faintest of sounds...I thought it was nothing-only my crazy "Law & Order" imagination.
4. Every night this past week with the warmer weather, we turn on the box fan in our window. We were 'thisclose' to turning on our fan that night before we went to bed. For some strange reason we didn't...otherwise, we would've heard nothing and woken up to find no car.
So after the police did their thing, a neighbor came running up saying a car was parked by his house and two guys jumped the fence, got in the car, drove off, etc. We finally crawled back in bed at 2:30 a.m. thinking we wouldn't be able to fall asleep. In the morning, we inspected it a bit more...found their tool that they left in the car, and realized the steering column was truly broken. You could put a screwdriver in the white plastic part hanging down and start the car up.
So the sad realization is that we were going to sell the car in the next couple of months-I only drive it 2x a week to work and we just wanted a 4 door car for the rare times the kids would be in it. But now we're going to probably have to go through the insurance company, pay a $500 deductible and get the car fixed. At 2:30 in the morning before we fell back to sleep, we both looked at each other and said, "We should've just let them steal the dang thing." If only we would've thought through the situation before the adrenaline kicked in. I definitely feel a bit more jumpy these last two days and we lock the house and cars down like its Ft. Knox when we go to bed. How did we go from living in a halfway shady neighborhood in West Haven and never being bothered there to moving to this cute, quiet, safe neighborhood in a nicer town and having this happen?
And we thought we were upset..I think our neighbors are way more in a tizzy about this. They loved to brag about how there is never any crime here for 50+ years...
Anyway...an exciting week for the Chiodos.
