“Alicia Cappola said a man tried to break into her home around 1:45 am,” kirotv.com reports. “Desperate for help, she dialed 911, only to find out that her calls were not going through. Unbeknownst to Cappola, Washington state’s 911 system was suffering from intermittent outages. ‘After I tried 911 a couple times and it rang busy, they were still at the door,’ said Cappola.” In the end, Cappola ended up calling 911 . . . wait for it . . . wait for it . . . 37 times. So she had to take matters in her own hands . . .
Eventually, the man crawled in through a window, and Alicia, realizing that her young twins were asleep inside the house, armed herself with a knife, prepared to protect her family.
“You call 911 and they come and they save you. And they weren’t going to come and save me,” she said.
Luckily, the man soon ran out of her house, and she was able to get through on an alternate number for the Everett police that she had to look up on the Internet.
An hour after her first call, she finally got someone on the phone and police arrived. By that time, the intruder was gone.
While we applaud Ms. Cappola’s bravery, it’s a bit disconcerting that she continues to cling to the idea that calling 911 is a guarantee that the police will save your toches. To quote the old adage, when seconds count, the police are only an hour away. Oh, and kitchen knives are a useful tool for self-defense, but a gun is better. Just sayin’ . . .