Home Intruders? Try A Ham Sandwich

Women Trick Intruder With Ham Sandwich, Rum

TAMPA – Cathy Ord and Rose Bucher knew what they had to do when a home invader armed with a sawed-off shotgun broke in Tuesday night.

“We just treated him with kindness,” Bucher, 63, said.

Both managed to keep a clear head and made friends with the man, at one point making him a ham sandwich, with pickles, and offering a bottle of rum.

The women, who share a house on Shedberry Drive in Carrollwood in northwest Hillsborough County, even suggested the man get cleaned up. They allowed him to use their shower and gave him a disposable razor to shave his scruffy beard. By the end of the night, the groomed intruder grew groggy from the meal and rum and passed out.

That’s when county sheriff’s deputies were called in to make the arrest.

Bucher and Ord had settled in Tuesday night, watching television and checking e-mail, when they heard an explosion of glass from the kitchen about 9:30. Through the dining room came a man with a shotgun. He aimed it at Ord.

“It was so surreal,” said Ord, 60. She offered him cash and the keys to her Cadillac, but he didn’t leave, she said. She thought perhaps he had robbed a nearby store and was more interested in a safe place than cash and a car. If that was the case, he may be there for a while, she said she thought.

The man ordered the women to turn off the lights and to whisper when talking. He sat for a long time chit-chatting with a shotgun in his hands.

“He said he wouldn’t harm us unless we did something smart,” Bucher said.

The women asked, in a whisper, whether he was hungry. He said yes. They made him a sandwich, then asked whether he wanted a drink. He said yes. They handed him a bottle of rum.

They suggested he take a shower and shave so he could “sort of be disguised in his getaway,” Ord said. He went into the bathroom and showered, she said, coming out every minute, wrapped in a towel, to make sure the women weren’t calling for help.

He called and talked to his girlfriend, the women said, and then, shortly after 3 a.m., he asked whether they would call him a cab.

“The cabdriver called and said he couldn’t find our place,” Ord said. She talked the gunman into letting her go outside to flag the taxi into her driveway.

“He [the burglar] was awake when I went out,” she said, but was unconscious when she came back, apparently the victim of too much rum.

The cabdriver called 911, and within minutes more than a dozen sheriff’s deputies flooded through the door.

“They came in, screaming at the tops of their lungs,” she said.

Alfred Joseph Sweet, a 42- year-old homeless man, was arrested. He was charged with home invasion and false imprisonment and remained in the Orient Road Jail on Wednesday. No bail was set.

“I’ll never forget this,” Bucher said.