Burglars Get Creative, Enter Home Through Bathroom Floor
A Columbus, Georgia family’s home was burglarized in the middle of the afternoon, and the burglars chose a rather creative way to enter the home – through the family’s bathroom floor. The Burnhams are reportedly missing more than half of their personal belongings and half the floor after the home invaders chose to bypass the security cameras, entering through a crawl space, then chiseling through the floor.
The bathroom is located on the one side of the Burnhams’ home not surveilled by the cameras. The strangers attempted to break into several other areas before realizing that the crawl space was their only option and being forced to get creative.
Timothy Burnham said he returned home that evening around 5 p.m. to find a large hole in the bathroom, a completely ransacked house, as well as an entire safe full of handguns, rifles, hundreds of rounds of ammo, and other valuables missing.
He headed into the master bedroom followed by a news crew. “My gun cabinet was right here, and it had close to $80,000 worth of firearms in there,” Burnham said. Then he proceeded to the crawl space area, “They cut my whole flooring system right here.”
In looking over their home, the family has also noticed jewelry, family heirlooms, and brand new Christmas presents missing. They are still assessing the total extent of the damage. As far as the bathroom is concerned, Burnham said, “They destroyed my plumbing, all my water lines, I don’t have any water in my house now. I can’t use the toilets or shower, it’s awful.”
The whole situation has put undue strain on Burham, his wife and their two children during one of the busiest times of the year – the holiday season. “My wife’s a full time teacher and does after school programs, my daughters have school, I’m a superior over on Fort Benning, I leave there and go to school till around 10 o’clock at night, plus I work side jobs to make ends meet. I barely have time for my family. I sure don’t have time to be fixing all this,” Burnham explained.
On top of having to put together the home again, the family is temporarily avoiding it altogether, because they no longer feel safe staying there. “My family and my kids can’t live like this,” Burnham explains, “And, uh, so, I’m just going to keep my faith in the Lord and keep praying and hopefully everything turns out in the end.”
In 2014, a burglar in North Carolina chose to get creative by utilizing a similar route into a home, first entering the crawl space, then working his way under the home to reach the area below the guest bedroom. The HVAC system was damaged in the process, and overall, the homeowner reported the damage done to the structure as more costly than the value of the items stolen.
“I never would have thought someone would go through a crawl space of my home to break into my home,” neighbor, Alaska Geter, said in an interview after hearing of the unusual means of entry.
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