Montgomery County family shaken after stranger walks into their home overnight
MONTGOMERY COUNTY, Md. - A Montgomery County family is counting their blessings Tuesday after suffering quite a scare inside their home in the middle of the night.
It’s one of those crimes that nightmares are made of — a stranger broke into the family’s home while they were asleep inside and the incident was all caught on the victim's Ring camera.
They shared the video with FOX 5, hoping to warn other families about the potential danger in their community.
Just after 1 a.m. Monday, the suspect crept up to the front door of Joseph Green and Tonya Barber's home in Clarksburg, Maryland. The shirtless man rang the bell, then walked away as the couple and their three young daughters slept inside.
"It, like, jarred us from our sleep," Barber told FOX 5. "When I reviewed the footage from my Ring camera this person had, like, no shirt on and just a pair of pants on. I'm not even sure if he had on shoes. Like it was...it was terrible."
Barber says her husband got out of bed and went downstairs to check it out.
"He said that he went to the door, didn't see anybody, then he saw the person moving around our car," Barber said.
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She says when her husband saw the man messing with their truck, he went outside to try to chase him away.
"And by that time I just heard a bunch of screaming and a bunch of yelling. The car alarm kept going off. I locked me and my three daughters in the room and then I called the police," Barber said. "I was just shaking and scared the whole time because I didn't know what else to do."
When Green went back inside his home to get a weapon, the strange man followed, walking right into their house.
Green immediately chased the stranger out of the house armed with what he said was a machete. He took several swings at the man, who suffered what we're told were minor injuries.
Green would later stand guard at his front door armed with a gun until Montgomery County Police arrived and took the home invader into custody.
"It’s still affecting me. You know this is supposed to be a nice neighborhood. This is a nice neighborhood. We went through a lot to get to this area," Green told FOX 5. "For that to happen, just a random person, [I] wasn’t expecting it here."
"It takes a big toll emotionally. Especially with my two girls hearing all of the commotion and screaming and them not knowing what was happening with their dad outside," said Barber. "I give kudos to the 911 dispatcher because she stayed on the phone with me the whole time and made sure everything was ok and she kept me calm."
According to the family, they were told the man was non-verbal and on the autism spectrum. We're not sure what if any charges that man will be facing.
