SOMETHING WICKED
FAMILY COMES HOME FROM TRICK-OR-TREATING TO FIND STRANGE MAN ROOTING AROUND BASEMENT
Trick or treat turned into fight or flight — actually it would involve both — after a strange man emerged from a family’s basement on Tuesday evening.
Dave Battaino and daughter Jasmine returned to their home in Sudbury, Ont., just before 7 p.m. on Halloween, while Battaino’s wife Kate and two boys continued to go door-to-door in another neighbourhood.
As they entered their home, with Jasmine’s dog Rosseau at their side, it was immediately clear something was off.
Both doors — the main one, and a second leading from a mud room into the house proper — were ajar and “there was change everywhere on the floor,” says Jasmine. “We knew someone broke in.”
Seconds after concluding their priciest possessions hadn’t disappeared, “I heard some rustling noises down in the basement,” Jasmine says. “I turned to my dad and said, ‘There’s someone down there.’ ”
Battaino says he barely had time to react before the intruder, a man in his early 50s, “came barrelling up the stairs” and into the kitchen.
The homeowner, 64, grabbed him in his arms and the two wrestled down the hall and through the busted door into the mud room.
Kenneth Baragar, 51, who is facing charges of break and enter and assault, made a brief appearance in bail court Wednesday. He was remanded in custody and is scheduled to appear in bail court Friday for a possible bail hearing.
Meanwhile Jasmine was “going ballistic,” she says. “I was screaming at him to get the f--- out of our house.”
Battaino says he had the man briefly contained near the exterior door and imagined he might be able to pin him there until police arrived, but he was hard to hold onto.
“He was powerful,” he says. “He pushed me out onto the deck and I’m grabbing onto him to break my fall, trying to get him to fall first so it’s his back not mine.”
The two fell off the edge of the porch together, landing in a heap on the frosty ground. Luckily the deck isn’t too high, but Battaino got the worst of the tumble.
“I landed on my back with him on top of me,” he recounts. “I grabbed his coat and it comes off, and then I ripped his shirt right off him. So now he’s running down the driveway in just his pants and shoes.”
Battaino might have decided at that point to give up and let the police take over, but was full of adrenalin and couldn’t just watch the man escape.
“I was in a different state of mind altogether,” he says. “I had to get that guy.”
He tore down the driveway after him — with Rosseau galloping along behind him — and gained ground on the man as he slowed down.
“He was catching his breath,” he says. “When he saw me coming he took off again down the path (along Junction Creek).”
Battaino was hot on his heels, and talking to 911 on his cell at the same time. “I was asking the dispatcher, ‘Where are the cruisers?’”
Luckily a couple of police cars were nearby and cut off the man as he tried to dash out the other side of the trail.
Still naked from the waist up, the man scrambled up the wooded cliff.
“Two cops took off with me on foot into the bush,” says Battaino. “We thought we’d lost him but then we heard this little twig snap in the bush, and the cops threw a light on him. He was in this thicket on the hill, going through it.”
Battaino says the police officers told the man to surrender peacefully or they
I TURNED TO MY DAD AND SAID, ‘THERE’S SOMEONE DOWN THERE.’
would Taser him, but he apparently wasn’t ready to submit.
“He got up and seemed to roll down this half-cliff, halfhill back onto the path,” he says. “So the chase resumes. And meanwhile there’s a cruiser coming up the path.”
Finally the police collared the culprit, and Jasmine was there to help identify him as the one who was inside the home.
He also left a piece of ID in the coat Battaino earlier yanked off his burly frame. When he returned to his home with police, “there was this jacket lying there on the ground, with his health card in it.”
The officers showed him the photo ID and asked, “does this guy look familiar?” recounts Battaino. “Yep, that’s him.”
Kaitlyn Dunn, spokesperson for Greater Sudbury Police, says officers arrested a “51-year old man from Greater Sudbury” around 7:05 p.m. on Tuesday. The man “was taken to hospital and treated for minor injuries,” she says, and has been “charged with break and enter and assault.”
Battaino and his daughter say they have never encountered the individual before, and don’t believe he intended to harm them personally, but simply wanted to find some cash or prescription pills inside the house.
They would later learn that, just prior to breaking into their place, the man had broken into the dwelling on the other side of their driveway.
Neighbours Darryl Morin and Joleen Moffatt say they had just returned from their own trick-or-treating with their kids when they noticed their door had been forced open.
The couple found nothing stolen or disturbed in their house, but feel especially lucky since Moffatt’s mother, who lives above them, was home at the time, yet wasn’t affected by the break-in.
“She was asleep and didn’t even notice,” says the daughter.
The couple believes she may have coughed, however, or made some other noise that caused the thief to reconsider his plan and focus on the Battaino home instead.
“I think he got scared and booked it over to Dave’s,” says Morin.
Battaino says he bears no anger at the man and only hopes he gets help for whatever issues he’s dealing with.
“I feel compassion for this guy because he didn’t steal anything notable and didn’t hurt my daughter,” he says.
“I feel for the underdog,” says Battaino, who has worked in social services and ran for the NDP provincially. “Somewhere in the unfolding of their life, something was missing.”