A firefighter recovering from heart surgery had the scare of his life when a group of people broke into his home while he was inside Thursday morning.
It began with repeated rings of Phil Herbert’s doorbell at the Tindal Springs Court home in Montgomery Village, Md. Herbert looked out the window and didn’t recognize the man standing at the door, so he didn’t open it.
“I thought, Well, maybe he’s just selling magazines,” Herbert said.
Herbert could feel the house shake as someone tried to open the patio door.
“Nothing scares me, but that scared me,” he said.
A second rumble came as one of the would-be robbers tried to break through a window -- first with his body, then with a chair.
“There is somebody breaking into my house right now,” Herbert told the 911 dispatcher. “He’s trying to come in now. He’s breaking up the back door. He just broke the window to come in. There’s two of them. Oh my God.”
Once they were inside, “I could hear them talking inside and walking around,” Herbert said.
Herbert barricaded himself in his bedroom, crouching down between the bed and a window, which he was prepared to escape through if necessary.
Police quickly arrived and chased away the intruders.
Herbert had a doctor’s appointment scheduled for today to find out if he can go back to work.
“I had heart surgery last week,” Herbert said. “So this was my stress test.”
