Considerate Wilmette resident delays filing burglary report

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Updated: February 27, 2012 8:32AM

A Gregory Avenue resident interrupted three would-be burglars in an unexpected face-to-face meeting Jan. 16 when she discovered them trying to break into her Wilmette home, police said.

Despite the experience, she waited until morning to contact police, who she assumed would be busy with more important things.

The woman said she had been asleep in her house on the 400 block of Gregory, when she heard noises outside her back door shortly before 10 p.m. She thought it might be her son, who occasionally visits at night, but when she got no response to her welcoming call, she opened the blinds of a window next to the rear door to investigate.

She found herself staring into the face of a man, standing on her back deck with his hands on the frame of the window through which she was looking.

The homeowner saw two other men with the intruders, one of whom was perched atop a stove stored on the deck, with his hands on the frame of another window.

When the three saw her, they ran. Two climbed over a back fence and headed east while the third man leaped from the deck and took off in the opposite direction.

The woman waited until morning to call police, who said she told them “she did not want to distract the busy police from performing their important duties” with her report, since the intruders didn’t get in.

Investigators assured her they “would nevertheless welcome her immediately calling the police should such an incident reoccur.”