Burglary in Journey Back to ME

I get so anxious as “back to school” time rolls around! This time is no different.

This time my anxiety is heightened EVEN MORE because of a break-in! The break-in was at my exes house. He had been out of town nearly 2 weeks, and I have a key and basically go over there when I please. If I need to wash my clothes, if I feel like spending the night, eating dinner over there, using his wifi and watching the TV....I do so. We lived there 2 years, and my ex and I have that type of relationship.

Anyway, so he was in Texas. Before he left for Texas he let his needy neighbor who is currently without electricity use his electricity. There are 6 kids in the household. The mother died a few Summers ago…the man is not worth a damn! He sells their food stamps, makes the older ones cut grass for money then he uses their money for drugs and alcohol. They never have basic necessities and their hygiene is atrocious. The kids’ hair is all matted…they don’t come and play, they don’t go anywhere…they sit inside all year round. My ex has DONE SO MUCH for that family even before their mom died. He’s given them money, toilet paper, dish detergent, let them borrow appliances, driven them to the store, driven them to food pantries, given the man rides to anywhere he needed to go, driven the older kids to school when they’ve missed their bus DAILY…let him borrow money, i’ve given the kids clothes and toys, he’s given them a couch…EVERYTHING. My ex is handicap and in a wheelchair and as of 2022, missing a leg! His income is not unlimited. Shortly after the woman died, he moved another woman in and neither of them are working. Even without them working and with the food assistance and death benefits, they have MORE than enough to get buy. They live in low income housing as well, and the bills they do have are few and far between. This is PURE neglect.

So before my ex left, he had been letting the neighbor use his electricity (this is not the first time, and the neighbors also used his water hose in the past when their water was out). He told them that once he went out of town, he would be unplugging the extension cord. I didn’t come to my exes house until maybe 4 or 5 days after he was gone. The first day my kids and I went over there and spent the night and washed our clothes. The next day after taking my kids to camp and to daycare, I returned to his house to find an extension cord extending from the neighbors window to the side of his house. I called him immediately and showed him and asked what he wanted me to do…he said to unplug it. So I did. At the same time that I unplugged it, someone slowly started pulling the extension cord back into their window. The person didn’t say anything or make a comment or anything, they just pulled the cord in and I went on about my day. Before I left the house to get my kids, I discussed with my ex that I would turn the curcuit breaker off. I took all of the food from his fridge and freezer and took it to my house. Then I went home…

The next day, I went back to the house to retrieve something I forgot there. My daughter went inside with me and we noticed that all of the children were outside playing in the water at the neighbors house. I was so excited for them because they NEVER come outside and in the 4 Summers we’ve spent here, I’ve never seen their dad or mom play with them or even have them outside playing in the water with waterguns. I acknowledged the children but they didn’t say anything back to me which was weird because these kids come over and beg for snacks, they’ve eaten my childrens candy, they ask for water, they ask to play with my kids....constantly, they’re asking for things or wanting to play with whatever my kids have. So one of the older girls started telling her dad that we were outside and getting ready to leave. I was thinking that he was going to try to come outside and apologize about the electricity situation, but no what did he do. He started shouting “fuck you!” and all types of things at me. In front of my child and his 6. His kids were laughing and smiling about it…the same kids that he just asked my ex the night before he left if they could sit in his house in the air conditioning…

So the next day I come over to check the house EARLIER in the day this time. They weren’t outside this time. I ran in the house and walked around and everything was in one piece and I left. The next morning, I come over even earlier....and let me say this, those kids attend a school directly across the street and never make it to school on time. And for some reason they were up SUPER early and everybody INCLUDING the dad were outside. I had my kids with me and as a woman that felt threatened, I did not stop and instead chose to drive right by. I decided at that moment that I would just wait until my ex came home 2 days later to come back over.

Now in the meantime, my ex was calling the electric company from out of town, and they sent a field investigator out. That person TALKED to his neighbor. I kept telling him not to do anything until he’s at home because I didn’t want the neighbors messing with his stuff. Field investigator confirms that they came out and talked with the neighbor. My ex came home on Saturday to find his house had been broken into. Circuit breaker was off, so the cameras didnt catch them. The police comes and then suddenly, the family next door starts scrambling. I haven’t so much as seen them leave the house this year, let alone ALL 8 people leave at once. The kids all had bags and backpacks and they piled into the minivan of an older gentleman that lives across the street.

Long story short.. they could have done more damage. It was clear that they did it. I mean, they stole some snacks and threw the leftover boxes on the ground, they took all of his custom bongs (“water pipes”)…basically they took all of his drug paraphernalia (weed tray, vapes, edibles, weed <—hardly enough to use for one hit on a bong), some money, a PS4 (luckily he travels with his PS5), the Amazon Alexa Echo Dot…i mean they left behind named brand clothing, hats, shoes, cell phones, TVS and computers, medicines …they did steal the Ipad (doesn’t work) and my tablet (password locked). They stole the BLENDER which is an appliance they ask to borrow all of the time…they broke a back window and left out of our side door that leads directly to the side of their house. Their windows are always open and if someone was a true criminal who does this all the time and it wasn’t THEM, would they have gone out a door that literally faces the entire side of the house of the niehgbor with every single window open?

By the time the police came back to get my statement the family was gone. Now the older neighbor that drove them, we got ahold of him and let him know what they had done to us. This is a small neighborhood and my ex was the type to still leave his door unlocked. He’s lived there for years and no one has ever so much as bothered him. People in the neighborhood respected him. Anyway the neighbor let us know that he had driven the neighbor to the Pawn Shop earlier that morning carrying something with the size of a playstation (fast forward a few days and the police come out to the pawn shop, the man did pawn a Playstation 4 but it was his own which leads us to believe that they’ve kept his because he has more games than they do and an external hard drive. Some neighborhood teenagers also confirmed that one of the older children tried to sell THEM some of my exes drugs. We don’t live in a legal state, so everything he has is bought from a dispensary out of state that he goes to with his brother when he goes to visit his brother, so they were selling something they don’t even HAVE here…and then the older neighbor let us know that he had driven the family around for hours because they were scrambling trying to get a motel. None of the motels would take 8 people in one room…

Basically the family is in hiding. Why hide if you’re not guilty? And why not use the money you made from pawning things off to pay your electric bill? We know that someone is inside the house because from time to time the windows are open, but no one is coming outside or going inside…or anything.

We’ve made several police reports....the police hasn’t so much as knocked on their door. We reached out to the Low Income housing and alerted them of the situation. We got in touch with their personal housing case worker. I used to be a recipient of a Housing Choice Voucher (Section 8) and it was required that I keep the utilities on, and annually we had inspections. Their house is no where near being cared for. The house is filthy and disgusting and so are the people that live in it, so I let the case worker know everything. So they have the police report and they are checking on the history of utilities. I know for a fact that the electricity has been off more than once this time its been AT LEAST a month and a half, and that the water was off for a large amount of time at one point. My ex checked his usage and you could see that as soon as he left to go out of town, his electricity was being used up until I turned it off, and you can also see the skyrocketed use for a while. He thinks they’ve even been using it longer than he had first given them permission to.

The electric company didn’t help (they told him that they stole from HIM and not THEM, so they couldn’t do anything, the housing guy said that he has to give them a chance to get the electricity back on, the pawn shop was a dead end, the police officers did not help (couldn’t take finger prints, didnt knock on their door, didn’t question anyone)…NO ONE has been exceptionally helpful, they just agree that it is strange that now the family is running. And how is it that people that don’t have electricity and eat from food banks suddenly have money for a hotel? And why steal electronics and appliances you cannot plug in and use?

We got some more cameras and the ones we have in the windows are not hidden whatsoever. If someone so much as comes anywhere near that house we will know. We got some motion sensor lights and lock boxes for the electric boxes outside.

Can I also add that some chairs that were on our porch were in front of the neighbors house and my kids SPRINKLER that was on our porch is now suddenly missing after they had a week of no lights and had to play outside in the water? There was about a 4th of a bottle of wine that was on the counter and that was taken too…

They were extremely sloppy at the job that they did and we are CERTAIN it was the oldest children of that house. We just can’t “prove it”. These are children he has watched grow and basically provided for their whole life. Every time they came over and asked for something, my ex ALWAYS said YES and was there for those people.

Their meal ticket is gone and everybody in the neighborhood is tired of them asking for stuff. They had that older gentleman driving them around for over 2 hours at night and didn’t so much as offer gas money for his troubles. Everyone wants them OUT and now they’re hiding.