Police arrested a naked man after he was found hiding in the crawl space under a 93-year-old woman’s home in El Sereno, California, on Friday morning.
It is suspected that 27-year-old Issac Betancourt had been living under the house for about six months – and he wouldn’t have gone down without a fight.
Los Angeles police said the evacuation took hours and countless resources, including tear gas. Their efforts took so long and caused so much commotion that sleeping neighbors had to find somewhere else to stay overnight.
“He refused to go. He was not afraid of dogs, and could not be driven out even in the first two gas attempts,” said Ricardo Silva, the homeowner’s son-in-law. nbc news,
Silva and the rest of the family said they heard strange noises for several weeks, but assumed it was a wild animal. When the noise became impossible to ignore, they called the police.
“The noises were like knocking. It was like, my wife was walking by, they were kind of knocking under the house, so she says, ‘You know something is wrong,'” Silva said.
The crawl space was barely 2 feet long and extended to the bottom of the house with three separate entryways. The family thinks he simply used one exit to get around as he pleased, and they plan to climb into the crawl space as quickly as possible.
“It’s a strange thing, but it’s probably not unusual, you know. In this day and age, people are looking for shelter,” Silva said.
The LAPD said Betancourt was arrested for trespassing on land. It is not clear whether he has a lawyer.
