Mishawaka family traumatized after attempted home invasion

 

MISHAWAKA, Ind. --- Talk about a rude awakening; bright and early Thursday morning a Mishawaka family woke up to a stranger covered in blood barricading himself in their home!

Mishawaka Police responded to the incident; they say the man was not able to enter the home, but the family left traumatized by the experience says otherwise.

“How dare somebody come in here and scare these kids like this?” asks Kathy Hirsch, a resident at the home on Battell Street.

It was a rude and terrifying awakening for Hirsch and her family, when they woke up to a stranger inside their home.

“As she was setting up, she looked and I heard her say ‘Who the f*** are you?’ and boom my eyes are instantly opened,” recalls Hirsch.

Hirsch’s niece woke up at around 5:15 a.m. to find the man dripping with blood standing inside the entrance to their apartment.

“He opened my door and closed it, and he was standing against my door,” Hirsch explains. “We have four kids in this house and what’s this guy capable of, he literally had himself barricaded in my house.”

Hirsch had a baseball bat in-hand ready to protect the children as young as four years old, but ultimately decided not to swing. She was more concerned about the trace of blood he was leaving on her floors, doors, and walls.

“You don’t want to confront people sometimes because you don’t know what they’re capable of. I looked in his eyes and I was like ‘I’m not even messing with this dude’, then I saw the blood and we were like ‘We don’t even want to touch him,’” Hirsch says. “If he was on drugs, he could have had anything, and I can’t afford for one of those babies to be around that.”

She believes the man may have come from the alley way that is behind their home, and she also says police found a trail of blood leading from the front door all the way to the intersection of Broadway and Logan Streets a half mile away. Even some bloody clothing was found near another home connected to that alley. Hirsch says her door was locked, but she's been having issues with her deadbolt working properly.

“We’ve always felt safe, we’ve never worried about anything, but you know they always say it won’t happen because it can, and oh my gosh,” says Hirsch. “He acted scared, but he doesn’t know how bad he scared us.”

Hirsch, the four children, and two other women are still shaken up, but she wants her neighbors and everyone else to know to be on the lookout so something as strange as this won’t happen to someone else.

“I’m glad nobody got hurt, I’m glad he’s gone, I just hope and pray he doesn’t try to do that to anybody else,” Hirsch says.

Mishawaka Police are still on the search for the suspect. If you have any idea where the suspect may be or have security footage that caught the attempted home invasion, they urge you to contact the Mishawaka Detective Bureau or Michiana Crime Stoppers at 574-288-STOP.