“It was 2:00 in the morning and I was just settling into falling asleep with my girlfriend when I heard the balcony door that opened into the living room slide open. My roommate, T, and I are both night owls and we leave our garbage outside in a bin on the balcony, so I didn’t think much of it. I just assumed he was tossing something in the trash. I began to fade to sleep and was sort of half conscious when I heard a loud and jarring banging on my door.
I jolted out of bed and busted out of my room into the living room, not knowing what the fuck was going on. Unbeknownst to me, my roommate and his wife weren’t home and came home later from a night out, saw what happened, and immediately started banging on my door.
As soon as I opened the door I immediately realized what they had learned just moments earlier – we had been robbed. The door I heard sliding open wasn’t T, it was the motherfuckers that broke into my house.
They stole our guitars, jewellery, 4 laptops, watches and cash….Now I was fully awake, and I was PISSED OFF.
The thought of these assholes who had the gaul to sneak into my place made me sick. The idea that they broke into MY home, took OUR stuff and felt like they were going to get away with it fuelled me with a rage and a purpose that left my body tingling…it was now my duty to rob the motherfuckers that had robbed me and T.
I was fuming and chomping at the bit to get on the trail of these bastards, so I grabbed T, ran downstairs to notify the security guard of what happened and the three of us started looking for the guys who did it.
We circled the perimeter of the building to see if the person/people who did it were still nearby. There was no sign of the people who did it, but what we did find shocked us. There were two ladders propped up leading to our balcony on the first floor, a box of power tools sitting at the foot of the ladder and a bicycle with a plastic lunch bag filled with a pipe and what I can only assume to be crystal meth.
We were robbed by fucking meth heads.
If we wanted any chance at catching the guys who did this, we knew we were going to have crafty. So, security, T and I went back to the apartment where we set up an extra security camera that the front desk security had given us. We connected it to my girlfriend’s phone so they could monitor the alleyway from home while I equipped myself with a loose metal pipe from my building and my Glock 19 and headed out to Bloor street to see what we could find.
By the time we got out into the street, it was 3:00 am. It was dark and seedy looking and homeless drug addicts filled the alleyways in between the building. It didn’t matter to us though, our adrenaline was pumping and I was locked in.
As we walked the street, we encountered a homeless man with a large bag practically bursting at the seams. I grabbed the man by the back of his shirt and yelled at him to open his bag. Startled beyond belief, the man gave us his bag. We dug through the whole thing – just clothes. It wasn’t our stuff. I apologized, explained our situation and gave him his stuff back. He was thankful we didn’t beat the shit out of him, so, out of pure gratitude, he pointed us to an adjacent alleyway guarded by iron doors saying “if the guy is still around here, you can bet he’s in there”.
We thanked him and the three of us hopped the iron door into an enclosed alleyway that opened up into a small park littered with tents, used needles, cigarette buts, pipes and homeless people passed out on the lawn. It was a fucking mess.
As we patrolled the park, we noticed a man with a large, full, backpack that was carrying a 4ft metal rebar poll that he fashioned into a makeshift mace. Now, any normal person would avoid this guy, but it was 4:00am, I was still fuming mad and was not in the mood to take any shit.
I approached the man and asked him to open his bag, showing him the metal rod that I brought with. Being the seasoned and experienced homeless man he was (he’d clearly been in a few scuffles) he didn’t flinch at me swinging the pipe in his direction and egged me on to ‘try him’.
I realized I had to take this to another level, while T and the security guard stood 10 feet behind me, scared to get involved. I turned around, pretending to walk away defeated as I felt for my Glock inside my jacket pocket. I turned back around, pointed the gun at the man’s face and told him to get on his knees and open the backpack or I’d plug him and put 4 in his chest.
His demeanor instantly changed. Without saying a word, he dropped to his knees and opened the bag – none of our stuff was inside. Frustrated and a little embarrassed, I was going to apologize for being so aggressive but before I could, he told us “I don’t have your stuff. I don’t do ‘Break and Enters’ anymore”. It was clear he was a piece of shit, so we left without saying anything.
We scoured the city looking for anyone who had a bag or looked like they were up to no good, but were very tired and our adrenaline was gone so we called it a night and went back to the apartment as the sun rose. The security guard told us he would watch the security cameras and call us if the guys came back to get their bicycle and box of power tools from the adjacent alleyway while me and T got some sleep. So we crashed – hard.
It was around 10:30 am when I woke up to a call from the security guard. “They’re at the bike! There’s two of them! Run over now!” I yelled for T, grabbed the metal pipe and stuffed the glock in my back pocket. We burst out the front door and sprinted down the stairs and into the alleyway where we caught them just as they were about to turn onto church street.
I walk up to them with the metal pipe in my hand and yell “You mother fuckers broke into my house last night. We saw you come back for your bike and the tub of tools. Give us our shit back! Now!”
There were two of them. One of them was a short, bug-eyed, cracked out Arabic man who looked like he smoked meth for sport. The other was tall and lean and wore a red Adidas tracksuit.
As I was yelling at these two morons, I noticed the bug-eyed crackhead was actually holding my guitar, a laptop bag and two duffle bags filled to the brim. The audacity of this prick was astounding.
I walked up to him, grabbed the guitar and put it on my back.
“Give us the other shit! I’m going to smash your face in and break your knees if you don’t give it to me right now!”
Those degenerate crack heads doubled down on their bullshit and called my bluff and responded with “We don’t know what you’re talking about. We don’t have any of your shit. Plus you’re not going to do anything tough guy.”
I was fucking irate. These junk heaps of human beings were actually trying to convince me that they didn’t break into my house when a moment ago, they were holding MY GUITAR.
I was completely fed up, so I pulled out my Glock, and pressed the barrel of it against the short bug-eyed guy’s hip. Both of them froze. They weren’t talking now.
“Give me my stuff, or I’m going to plug you right here. I’m not fucking around,” I told them. With a serious startled look on his face, the short guy nodded to his friend who promptly handed over the laptop bag and two duffle bags behind me to T and the security guard.
As they looked through the bags, I kept my eyes on the two pathetic meth heads who had a look of total shock in their eyes and were cowering in fear.
“Everything’s here” yelled T.
A wave of Euphoria washed over me.
I’m not going to lie, I’ve done some bad things throughout the years, but, if there is anything I’ve learned from this experience it’s that 1: my property management company is useless and has still done virtually nothing about making us feel safer in our own home other than a cheap plastic bar over the door to deter intruders and, 2: sometimes two wrongs do make a right – like robbing back the meth heads back that stole from you in the first place.”