We can all remember how it felt to be left home alone as a teen: equally thrilling and terrifying.
While having the freedom to roam the whole house and steal food from the snack cupboard as you please was an undeniable bonus, every small creek and bang seemed suddenly suspicious.
Luckily, our imaginations were usually more creative than reality, and most of us never had to face a real break-in.
But these things can happen, especially if the parents have left home with their cars, suggesting to a burglar that nobody is home.
According to FBI statistics, there were approximately 7,196,045 reported property crimes in the US in 2018 alone.
There’s nothing uncommon about a burglary, and even if your home has fairly good security, it could still be targeted.
12-year-old Taylor Blanton knows exactly what it’s like to be faced with a home break-in situation.
Worse, Taylor was all alone, hanging out in her bedroom before her mom came home from work, when she discovered that a burglar was trying to get in.
It would have been an unwise idea for Taylor, a defenseless pre-teen, to give the intruder any indication that she was home.
But she didn’t simply want to do nothing to at least get the criminal caught, so she used her phone to snap a photo from her bedroom window.
Then, despite the scary situation she faced, Taylor calmly called the police to report the break-in.
She said to the operator: “There’s a guy trying to break in, and I don’t know what to do.”
She was able to explain exactly what the man was wearing – a red Auburn t-shirt and a hat. She even went as far as to mention that he was carrying a rag in his back pocket.
As if Taylor hadn’t done enough work to capture evidence, she also managed to film a video of him walking around in the space between her house and the neighbors.
For a burglar, this man clearly wasn’t paying enough attention – which was exactly what Taylor hoped for!
It transpired that the man had knocked on Taylor’s front door, before heading over to her neighbor’s house, then returning and trying to break in through the back door.
After no success there, the man moved over to Taylor’s home’s garage. The quick-thinking teen knew she had to hide for her own safety, so she got into her wardrobe. Speaking to Inside Edition, she explained:
“If he breaks in, I’m not just going to be sitting there in a chair and be like, ‘Hi.’ So I’m hiding – and then I finally hear the police sirens coming from down the street.”
Thanks to all the evidence she was able to provide, Taylor assisted the police in the arrest of the man who had been breaking into her home.
As it turns out, this man is a career criminal who has been linked to other burglaries in the neighborhood.
Though Taylor was happy to have helped the police, she said that the ordeal was “not fun”, which is hardly surprising! Grown adults would have struggled to show Taylor’s level of bravery when faced with such a situation.
Watch the video below for an interview with Taylor in her home, plus reenactments of the steps she took when the burglar attempted to break into her home.
Please SHARE this with your friends and family.
