Cops: Homeowner with machete fights burglar

Joseph Senat keeps his machete close by, for times just like this one.

He fed the chickens and grabbed a shirt for work on a recent morning, sticking with his daily routine in his Fort Lauderdale home. But on this day, Oct. 30, he heard an unfamiliar noise outside the back door.

Senat said he looked out the kitchen window and spied a man trying to pry open his door with a copper pipe.

So Senat grabbed the machete and beat the man to the chase when he opened the door. He said he asked the man why he was coming into his house and the man told him he was coming inside to steal.

“He tried to run, and I said, ‘You are not going to run, my friend,’ ” Senat said.

And so they began to fight: Senat with a machete and Roderick Thomas with a copper pipe, police said.

Senat said he was able to pin the badly injured, 26-year-old, would-be burglar in his yard until police arrived.

On Wednesday, Thomas finally had his day in court after being hospitalized for extensive injuries he received from the machete-wielding Senat on Oct. 30. One heavily bandaged arm was in a sling.

Thomas raised his unencumbered, albeit heavily bandaged other arm, to get the judge’s attention after being told he was being held on a burglary with

assault or battery charge.

“Hello,” he began. “I thought [the house] was abandoned.”

Brian Reidy, an assistant public defender, cut him off.

Then the state prosecutor chimed in. “Yes, he did suffer obvious injuries but it was the victim’s right to defend himself,” Assistant State Attorney Eric Linder said.

The public defender told the judge that the people living in the West Evanston Circle home had been chased from their home because of drive-by shootings.

Crime had chased him from his Fort Lauderdale home, Senat said. This coming May would have marked 20 years since he purchased the home. It’s on the market now after a series of drive-by shootings that Senat suspects are targeting him.

It started in October 2018. Senat says he doesn’t know why.

Senat visits the house during the day, but he and his family scatter by nightfall.

To Judge Jackie Powell, it did not matter if the home was occupied or not occupied when a suspected burglar showed up. She ordered that Thomas be held without bond.