LIBERTY HILL, Texas – A Liberty Hill homeowner’s camera captured an attempted break-in by a suspect with a machete.
In the video from Aug. 21 around 5 p.m., a man with a machete and a dog are seen approaching the home near Bear Creek. He appears to pass out.
That’s when homeowner Darryl Stevens was looking at the backyard with a contractor, and they noticed the man.
“At that moment, I obviously freaked out. I have two young children here in the house and just went into complete fight or flight mode,” Stevens said.
The man gets up, comes up the stairs, and pulls on the door.
“I start running through the house. I lock every door as fast as possible, run upstairs. Luckily, I had a firearm here, so I grabbed my 9mm, unlocked it, ran down as fast as possible,” Stevens said.
The suspect climbed the fence and got on the upper deck where Stevens confronted him.
“Told him he’s got to leave or he’s going to lose his life, you know? Luckily, after I did that, he dropped the machete,” he said.
The video then shows the intruder climbing back down, and a gun pointing at him as he walks away.
Stevens’ wife had called 911 in the meantime, and deputies arrested 43-year-old Jerry Escamilla of Bertram. He is charged with criminal trespassing and failure to identify and is being held on a $10,000 bond.
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“I just had to protect my family, and that’s what I did. Luckily, I didn’t have to discharge my firearm,” Stevens said. “It’s just not something you expect to happen in Liberty Hill in the country or way out in the country in the very back of this new, nice neighborhood… we moved out here, we moved further out of the city to feel safe.”
In Texas, a homeowner has the right to use deadly force to defend themselves under the Stand Your Ground law.
“If someone is trying to unlawfully enter and is being forceful, you have a right to use deadly force to protect your home, your car, and your place of employment in those situations,” Lt. Russell Travis with the Williamson County Sheriff’s Office said. “You don’t have to retreat. You have a right to defend yourself.”
Stevens says he and his family are shaken up, and plan to increase security around their home.
“We feel violated, as a family, we feel like our sense of safety in our safe place, which is our house, has been taken from us. I almost get a little emotional even saying that. It’s not fair,” he said. “We’re definitely upping security. We’re getting a few more firearms to have one upstairs, one downstairs. We are going to be installing more fences and more security features. Floodlights. I’m going to turn this place into Fort Knox at this point in time.“
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