Neighborhood woman hides in closet during attempted home invasion

THE VICTIM: Supawn Scheid
DATE: Sunday, Jan. 2
TIME: 8:15 p.m.
PLACE: 5400 block of Vanderbilt

It was the day after New Year’s. Supawn Scheid had just arrived home and settled down in her bedroom to watch a little TV and use the computer.

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Her boyfriend was out of town setting up his new business. Scheid stayed behind to field phone calls from people interested in buying their home on Vanderbilt Avenue.

In the bed next to her, her dog was fast asleep.

Then she saw the alarm system’s outside motion light flicker on.

“I thought it was weird, but that motion detector is pretty sensitive. We have ivy out there, and sometimes that will cause it to go on,” she says.

But she turned down the TV anyway. And five minutes later she heard someone running across the porch.

“It sounded like a really big person.”

At nearly the same time she heard the back screen door slam, a loud pop, and the sound of glass shattering.

“At first I thought it was a gun shot. I screamed bloody murder,” Scheid says.

After grabbing the phone, Scheid ran to the hallway and called 911. Then she jumped into the closet and hid until police arrived.

“I kept thinking I should have run out [of the house], but I knew there were two people on either side of the house. I was afraid they would grab me,” she says.

When the police finally arrived, Scheid didn’t waste any time bolting for the front door.

After searching the house, the responding officers found that the back door had been kicked open and the bedroom window had been broken, damaging the headboard of the bed. Although her doors and windows were damaged, nothing was stolen during the incident.

Scheid believes the intruders may have had some connection to a call about the house earlier that day. Scheid and her boyfriend had a “For Sale by Owner” sign in the yard for about a month and had received numerous calls and inquiries.

But this one was different.

“It was a weird call — he didn’t ask any questions about the house,” Scheid says, recalling that the man seemed to only want to know when she would be home, or in effect, was trying to get her to say when she would not be home.

The break-in occurred only hours after the phone call.

Whether or not the caller had anything to do with the crime remains to be seen. Scheid gave the phone number to the police, but she hasn’t heard anything yet.

And Scheid and her boyfriend ended up listing the home with a Realtor.

As for Scheid, she’s still replaying the events in her head, wondering if she should have done anything differently.

“I keep thinking I should have run out of the house,” she says.

She also wonders what the burglars were after, especially since it was obvious that the home was not empty, she says.

“I mean the lights were all on, my car was in the driveway. I don’t know how they couldn’t have known someone was home.”

Which brings up the question of the intruders’ intentions, something Scheid is trying to get out of her head.

“I am so scared to even stay home,” she says. “I think about that scenario everyday.”