The house is three blocks away from mine.
While my family and I were in bed, peacefully amidst our dreams late Tuesday night, three blocks away a 55-year-old woman was being tied up and struck repeatedly in the head with a baseball bat.
The three intruders also broke both of her hands.
This latest home invasion, in the East Rock neighborhood of New Haven, comes even before we brace for the first anniversary of the horrendous triple murder in Cheshire.
This could be an awful summer. The economy is going down the tubes, kids can't get jobs or find anything meaningful to do with themselves, so they hang out, get bored, get bad ideas.
But what kind of a sick mind finds sport in wielding a baseball bat against a 55-year-old woman?
Everybody's talking about it in our neighborhood, of course, and a meeting is being planned next Monday to air all of the concerns. There is talk of a neighborhood security patrol, perhaps to be funded by residents. Would I contribute? You bet.
Now my wife and I are talking to our kids again about the need to be careful, to lock those doors, especially the back one. You don't want to scare them, but you have to warn them.
We're glad we have a dog.
Meanwhile, a 17-year-old kid was arrested and he was in court today. I wasn't there for that event, but soon I will be in a courtroom observing him, as that's my job, especially when defendants get transferred to the "Part A" docket in the Superior Court building at Church and Wall streets.
I'll probably be tracking that kid and two co-defendants through the legal process in the months and years to come. One day many months from now, if they plead guilty or are convicted, I'll probably see that strong-seeming 55-year-old woman walk into one of those courtrooms and tell her story.
And I, along with everybody else with any sense and humanity, will wonder again what would possess somebody to do such a thing.
And we lock our doors.