Hunters

The Journal of Crime & Punishment

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HOME INVASION                                        28th September   

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 Crime and Punishment Journal 24th April 2014  

It was about 2 pm on a sunny day about ten or more years ago, (around 2003) and I had been asleep in my bedroom at one end of the house, when I woke to an unusual sound. It sounded to me as thouh the outside french door in the kitchen had been opend, but I realised later that this could not have been the case. Usually I would not be in the house at this time, I would have been out on a two hour training run, but I had been feeling tired. As I stood inside the bedroom door and listened I could hear the unmistakeable sound, I dont recall voices or talking, of people moving around the house.

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 Home invasion is a term used in the United States to describe illegal and usually forceful entry to an occupied, private dwelling with violent intent to commit a crime against the occupants, such as robbery, assault, rape, murder, or kidnapping.^[1][2]

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Like a fisherman waiting for a good bite, I listened for a little while before creeping the 10 metres down the passage connecting the bedrooms to the kitchen, and sneaked a look around the doorway. Two men, youths, were standing at the cupboard which held my plates and small change, on the wall which ran to my left adjacent to the door. With the cupboard doors open they didn't notice me for a second. I moved the two steps and placed my right arm around the neck of the one closest to me and said something like, "What are you doing?" As I pulled him close to me, I was careful not to hurt him, but used just enough force to restrain him with his back to me, and not to put any pressure on his airway.

The other youth took off, and shot into the laundry, which had a door into the hallway, and one outside. The other one didn't struggle too much, but I felt him fumbling with something in his shirt. He had turned at right angles to me, and we were facing the french doors in the kitchen, and I noticed it wasn't open, so it wasn't that door I heard them coming in, or they had locked it behind them. Next second, WHACK! Something hit me hard in the top of my head. It took me a second, and I thought nunchuks. It felt like wood hitting my head, hard wood, but as soon as it touched my skin, even though I didn;t see it coming, my knees reacted instinctively, and I absorbed some of teh blow. I was still thinking wood, when the second blow hit me. He was swinging up straight over the back of his head, and I was worried he might just come back with his head, and smash me in the face, so I tried to keep him off balance. I moved him back under the doorway where he couldn't get me, but he was quite strong for a 17 year old, as I later found out. I'm 185 cm 6'1",and something under 100 kgs, probably 80 or 85 at that time, and quite fit. He swung 2 or 3 more times. I wasn't even counting, just trying to keep him under the doorway, and wondering where his mate went. It was necessary for me to get him somewhere near the phone, so I could ring for help. It was back down the passage behind me. A metre or two, and we passed the lounge room door to my right, west. There was what looked to me like another man coming in through the french doors on the west of the lounge. It was only a glimpse, then I was dragged back toward the kitchen. For a moment I thought there were three of them in the house. We were struggling. He was struggling to get free. He was swinging. Some of them were hitting me in the head. Some of them I managed to move him forward and they mainly hit me in the back. I could see now that it was steel chain with a handle on it he was using, and he was swinging it with two hands. I didn't want him to escape as I could see myself lying on the floor, and him swinging and swinging at me, and he was desperate to get free. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 The first published use of the term "home invasion" recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary is an article in The Washington Post on 1 February 1912,^[17] with an article in the Los Angeles Times on 18 March 1925 clearly indicating the modern meaning.^[18]

"Home-invasion robberies" were highlighted in June 1995, when the term appeared in the cover story of The FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin in an article written by Police Chief James T. Hurley^[19] of the Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, area, later republished on bNet, the online blog posted by Harvard Business School. Hurley posited that, at the time, the crime could be considered an alternative to bank or convenience store robberies, which were becoming more difficult to carry out due to technological advances in security. In the same article Hurley recommended educating the public about home invasion.^[20] Before the term "home invasion" came in use, the term "hot burglary" was often used in the literature. Early references also use "burglary of occupied homes"^[21] and "burglar striking an occupied residence".^[22]

Connecticut Congressman Chris Murphy proposed in 2008 making home invasion a federal crime in the United States.^[23][24]