Attempted Break-in {Area 5}

An e-mail from an Area 5 neighbor:

"Our next door neighbor, 324 Birmingham, heard some noise coming from his kitchen early (6 AM-ish) this past Saturday morning. He went down, with a baseball bat, to investigate and saw a person with a ski-mask who had just opened his LOCKED sliding glass door from the outside. The person saw Russ and his baseball bat and took off. Russ called the police who came and searched pretty much every backyard in the North town-homes but didn't find anything. Russ and his family are fine, and the guy didn't break anything or get in the house to take anything. The police did say that 90% of the gates (ours included) were not padlocked, and they recommended that we all get padlocks. My first thought was if someone wants to get into a house, I don't think a fence or padlock is going to stop them. But, my husband pointed out that if they are trying to take something, say a computer or TV or anything really, they are going to have a harder time getting it over a fence than if they just took it through an unlocked gate.
You may want to remind people in our community via the blog to padlock their fence if they haven't already done so. We also put a big wooden stick in our sliding glass door to add one more obstacle."