The details of a Connecticut home invasion are all over the media today and are hard to stomach. Home invasions — i.e. where criminals deliberately enter a home while the occupants are present, and engage in their choice of robbery, rape or murder — are not so uncommon. This one rises to the top of the daily bad news due to the victims — may God help them — being the kind of family the media likes to describe as “picture-perfect,” and due to the fact that it happened in a very nice neighborhood and ended with multiple homicides.

From CBS:

The state medical examiner confirmed that Jennifer Hawke-Petit, 48, was strangled and that her daughters, 17-year-old Hayley and 11-year-old Michaela, died of smoke inhalation. The deaths were ruled homicides.

The girls’ father, Dr. William Petit Jr., a prominent endocrinologist, remained hospitalized with head injuries.

All three women were raped, sources familiar with the investigation told both the Waterbury Republican-American and Hartford Courant. Petit was beaten with a baseball bat, thrown down the basement stairs, and then tied up in the cellar.

The girls, sources told the Courant, were tied to their beds and raped repeatedly, then left to burn after gasoline was poured around their beds and ignited.

The suspects entered the Petits’ Cheshire home at about 3 a.m. Monday, planning to burglarize it, state police said.

Sources familiar with the investigation tell the Republican-American that Hawke-Petit and Michaela were followed home from a supermarket Sunday by the suspects. The men then went to a Wal-Mart to buy an air rifle and a rope, and then waited about a mile-and-a-half away

An air rifle and a rope.

As already said, home invasions occur all the time, and they can occur anywhere. Search Google News for that topic and you’ll find plenty — and those are only the really news-worthy ones. The only thing that generally determines whether these crimes stop at robbery, or progress to rape or to mass murder, is the whim of the thugs who are carrying out the crime. They may enter with only the intent to rob, and then something — their victims’ helplessness maybe — triggers the decision to take it to another level. But who really cares what their thought processes are?

There is one additional factor, if present, which can decide the outcome of these home invasions. Here are some that turned out differently:

Caller-Times, Corpus Christi, TX, 10/11/06

Police say a man confronted Rose Ann Kozlowski and her 14-year-old son at their home, then bound them with neckties in the master bedroom, held them at knifepoint and threatened their lives. The intruder began ransacking the home for jewelry and other valuables, which he placed in the family’s SUV. Meanwhile, Kozlowski managed to free herself and untie her son. She retrieved her husband’s revolver, handed it to her son and locked the double doors to the bedroom. The incensed intruder pushed at the doors, partially opening them as he waved his knife. The teenager aimed his father’s pistol toward the opening between the doors and squeezed the trigger. The armed robber dropped dead.

…

Hugo Daily News, Hugo, OK, 05/19/06

It seemed odd, even a bit suspicious, when a man knocked on 81-year-old Edna Songer’s door twice in one day, the first time claiming to be looking for a dog and the second asking for a glass of water. Police say that when the man returned for a third time, Songer tucked away a .25-caliber pistol and went to the door, where she saw the man and an accomplice jerking on her screen door until its latch hook came out. Both men were dressed in camouflage and one had a roll of duct tape. Songer shot through the screen door, causing both men to flee the scene.

…

Bluefield Daily Telegraph, Bluefield, WV, 10/20/06

Police say Rodney Hendrick and his wife were sleeping when a 24-year-old man smashed a front door window, waking the couple. Mr. Hendrick went to investigate, armed with a .357 Magnum revolver, and found that the suspect had left. Foolishly, the suspect soon returned and lofted a brick at the front door, knocking it open. He entered the residence, and Hendrick fired a single shot. The intruder died at the scene.

…

St. Louis Post-Dispatch, St. Louis, Mo., 02/07/06

After an 87-year-old woman’s home was burglarized, her daughter gave her a .38-caliber handgun so she’d be prepared if it happened again. That gesture may have saved the senior citizen’s life. According to the police, early one morning, the woman awoke to the sound of a man breaking into her home. Calling for help wasn’t an option; he had cut her phone wires. After the man removed the security bars from the woman’s porch and attempted to access the front door, she fired a round from her pistol. The would-be intruder lay dead on the woman’s porch for nearly four hours before her daughter showed up for breakfast. “She couldn’t call for help and was afraid to go outside,” said a state policeman. Authorities are investigating whether the man, a career criminal, was also responsible for the first burglary.

These and similar little stories from local news outlets are collected in a database by the National Rifle Assocation at this link. The stories are little, of-course, because they don’t end in rape and mass murder, but with criminals who either flee, get captured, or are shot. That’s not big news. It’s just good news. Would that there were more of it today.

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