Paralyzed Home Invasion Victim speaks
If a home invasion doesn’t leave you dead, it might leave you permanently paralyzed, like it did Richard Potorski, who was shot two years ago and can’t move from the chest down.
On January 8, 2013, Potorski went to his Maine home for lunch after work. Moments later he saw a gun pointing at him; it went off. He played dead—which wasn’t hard to do because his spinal cord had been severed—until his wife found him 90 minutes later.
Potorski says he doesn’t know the shooter, and even though he has a misdemeanor drug charge on his record, he was not involved with any drug deals with the shooter—Ronald Bauer, who received a 30-year prison sentence.
It’s a myth that most burglaries occur at night. Gee, night is when most people are home. Most people are gone during the day at work. Burglars know that. What if Potorski had had a security system on that fateful day? This isn’t a blame-the-victim mentality; it’s a very fair question.
Imagine Bauer trying to gain entrance and a screaming alarm sounds. He would have fled like a bat out of hell. Or suppose there was no alarm system, but the door had a top-of-the-line deadbolt and reinforcement system, and the locked windows all had Charlie bars and penetration-proof film. Bauer wanted to get in quick without attracting attention. Why would a burglar want to be seen spending 20 minutes trying to break into a house? Yep, it’s a very fair question.
Evaluate your lifestyle so that you can have an idea of what kind of security system will best suit you. For example, if you’re away a lot, or even only from 8:00 to 5:00, you’ll need a remote monitoring system.
Today’s systems are really cool in that you can even receive e-mails and texts about variables that the system detects. You can even see what’s going on with real-time surveillance transmitted to your phone.
Imagine that someone breaks in while you’re exiting your worksite to go home for lunch, and you get the alert on your phone. You connect and see some druggie trashing your place looking for cash. You won’t get shot by him. We live in a cruel world and need to be prepared.
Robert Siciliano personal and home security specialist to BestHomeSecurityCompanys.com discussing burglar proofing your home on Fox Boston. Disclosures.
