Greg Lang was spending time in his backyard with his wife when he went back into his house and found a thief rummaging through a bedroom.
Lang, surprised by what he found, immediately questioned what the man was doing in his home.
“He says, ‘I’m packing up for your daughter’ and I said, ‘my daughter doesn’t live with me.’”
The pair struggled trading punches and rolling down a set of stairs.
“He jumps over me and I grab him by the hips and he goes down the stairs and we roll down this set of stairs punching,” he says.
The thief ran out the back door into the yard where Missy Lang grabbed him.
“We keep on fighting,” she says.
Eventually the thief kicked through this gate and ran off from the Aldergrove Circle home. Police captured him a short time later and say he also broke into another home earlier in the day.
The 19-year-old man is charged with break and enter, assault and robbery.
Police say a common belief is that during the day thieves only target homes in a rural settings.
“This year alone we've had 22 residential break-and-enters in June and to date in July, we've had 12,” says Barrie police Const. Sarah Bamford. “You need to lock your doors no matter what time of day it is.”
The traumatic experience of fighting a thief will haunt Missy for a long time to come.
“I'm shaking,” she says. “Because I see the face.”
