Hide yo kids, hide yo wife, cause they're First-Degree-Burglaring everybody out there.

         This week has been a long week. On Thursday night, I set my alarm for later than I usually wake up, to give myself a break. So when one on my roommates (Anne Schrag) knocked on my door a little before 7 I was pretty grumpy. But then she told me this little hum-dinger, and I immediately forgave her. “Mariah, Mr. Cunningham (our next door neighbor) just rang the doorbell and told me that he just saw 2 men leaving our house. And Keith’s bike is gone.”

Crap.

          We wake everyone else up, and go downstairs to assess the damage. Doesn’t seem like much.  They had stolen Keith’s bike, moved Miriam’s to another room (obviously with the intent to steal it too), took my rain jacket from its hook by the door and laid it on the kitchen table next to Mirmir’s bike, and (here’s the really creepy part) moved the big kitchen knife from its knife holder to half-hazardly laying on its side next to the holder.

         So we call the cops and waited. I make pancakes (it seemed like the right thing to do when we are all up early in the morning waiting around), and eventually Mr. Cunningham came to our house (he had been up the street looking for the guys) and talked to us.  It was kind of like story-time with Grandpa. He told us about our neighborhood and how it has changed a lot, he told us about how he came to be our neighbor (he’d lived in DC all his life), he empowered us as young people to change the world, and he told us we needed to get a security system.

         Eventually the cop came and Mr. Cunningham told him the story. He had woken up early to take out his trash and saw two 40year old latino men walking 2 bikes down the street. They looked like run-of-the-mill drunks, so he didn’t think anything of it. He watched some news and, 30 minutes later those same two men were walking three bikes down the street. That’s when he started keeping an eye out, soon enough he saw them exiting our house from the front door. So when they left he came over and informed us.

       More and more people came (a detective and about 7 other cops and another detective). The detective was kind-of annoyed because we had touched and moved everything, and she wanted to take DNA samples. I apologized, I thought they took DNA for murder cases or more personal cases, not bike-theft cases.  But apparently they do when someone breaks into your house. When I told her about the knife she asked “which one.” “Uh, the one my roommate is using right now to cut her carrots.”Whoops. Then she was like “The fact that they moved the knife means they were planning on using it if someone came down, or maybe they would have gone upstairs if they had more time.” SHIT! That was scary.

       As the detective pressed Mr. Cunningham for more information, he told us that when he saw the men leave the house, they were carrying bottles of liquid. When I looked in the fridge I realized, yep, they stool our beer. We had this one special six-pack that one of our roommate’s boyfriend bought the house a week and a half ago. We were saving it for a special occasion, and now it’s gone. Obviously, patience is not a virtue, it just makes you that much more vulnerable in a burglary. So FINALLY everyone left. I made my lunch and one of my roommates came into the house and said that about 6 houses down, our beer is laying on the sidewalk, empty. DNA! My roommate called the detective.

A cop showed up, and my day turned sour. All the cops were nice when they had other people around watching them. This cop was such an ass!

“This isn’t exactly the crime-case of the century you know.” 

“I know officer, but the detective wanted DNA and we finally have it.”

“The detective (grumble grumble grumble) (mumble mumble mumble) not the crime case of the century.”

“I wasn’t trying to waste your time, I just thought it might help.”

“Well where is it?”

“Down the street a little bit.”

“Well I can’t leave my car, get in.”

I get in the car and we literally drive for five seconds before I say  “Stop, it’s here.” Lazy –ass.

    So yeah, mainly, no one is hurt. But it was just a really annoying morning. And it's scary to think they had time to rummage through all of our stuff before they heard Anne wake up (via her alarm) and get scared and run off. (At least we think that's why they left.) And it's scary to think that no one in the house heard them, even though they apparently appeared drunk. 

   Anyway,I don’t know if this is the appropriate way to end a blog like this…. but I don’t care. We don’t have any more information. 

Peace