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Mesa resident cuffs intruder at front door
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PREPARED: Dan Adams, a former security guard, holds the handcuffs he used to detain a burglary suspect in the bathroom of his Mesa home.
Ralph Freso, Tribune
Dan Adams has been burglarized not once, not twice, but three times since Jan. 14.
By Thursday afternoon he’d had it.
So when he was awakened by someone walking into his Mesa home about 1 p.m., he grabbed his semiautomatic and headed down the hallway.
Standing just inside his front door was a stranger, a young man in a red shirt and shorts tentatively calling out "Hello? Anyone home?"
Adams said he carefully slid the slide back on his .40-caliber handgun and confronted the man.
"The guy was surprised to say the least," said Adams, 38.
Within seconds Adams had the intruder handcuffed and trapped in a bathroom, a gun pointed straight at him. He called 911 and waited for Mesa police to arrive.
"I told him about 10 times that I was going to kill him and he tried to talk his way out of it, he kept saying he knew how to get my stuff back," Adams said.
A longtime Mesa resident, Adams said he moved into his home in the 800 block of North Quail about three months ago. The area, near Greenfield and Adobe roads, is a nice one, even with the burglaries, he said.
About $5,000 worth of electronics and tools has been stolen in the burglaries, Adams said. The last burglary, on Wednesday, netted the burglar a carton of cigarettes and Adams’ albino ferret, Ferret.
Adams, who restores homes for a living, said he stayed up until 4 a.m. Thursday setting up four surveillance cameras in the hopes of catching the burglar in the act the next time around. He set out the handcuffs he bought when he was a security guard and one of his guns.
The burglar came quicker than he thought, though, Adams said.
He said the suspect must have thought his home was empty because his pickup truck was in the garage, out of sight.
Bryan V. Temple, a 24-year-old transient, was arrested on suspicion of trespassing, said Mesa detective Tim Gaffney.
Arriving to find a suspect handcuffed is unusual, but Adams had the right to perform a citizen’s arrest and use "reasonable restraint," said Mesa police Lt. C. Schaub.
Adams said that by 7 p.m. Mesa officers had recovered some of his property from a house down the street.
They also found Ferret had been taken to an animal shelter. Adams hopes to retrieve him today.
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