JOYCE – A Joyce couple had a harrowing experience Monday morning that ended with a man in custody and authorities trying to piece together exactly what happened.

Don and Sandy Baker are the caretakers of the Crescent Grange in Joyce and live on the property in the adjacent house. Sandy says at about 4:30 am she heard someone yelling and looked out to see a man in the yard. She yelled for him to go away, and that’s when things quickly went south.

So I ran to the door and I’m like “Get the hell out of here”, you know, and shut the door. And then he started running towards the house. I ran towards my bedroom woke up my husband and he grabbed our our shotgun and got dressed and came out here, and the guy had picked up a concrete pad and threw it through our door, was trying to get into our house after he broke the window. And my husband he had the shotgun and he was holding onto it and the guy was trying to unlock the door, but he’s like, “Oh no! Don’t shoot don’t shoot!” He took off running and my husband went to pursue him out into the front yard and just told him to get down on the ground and then I called 9-1-1.”

Meanwhile, a local tow truck driver was out searching for a car wreck after getting a call from someone reporting two people with injuries. As he drove past the Grange, the crazed man on the ground, who was claiming he’d been given drugs, jumped up and ran in front of the tow truck, nearly getting run over.

“The guy almost hit him and he ran to the passenger side, tried to get in, couldn’t get in, ran to the driver side. The driver had opened up his door, was getting out, and the guy pulled him out of the way, jumped in the rig and tried to drive off with the rig but the tow truck driver set the air brakes and the guy couldn’t move it. And then the guy was just ransacking the tow truck inside and then jumped out of the rig and ran down the road. And the sheriff’s got him like about a quarter mile past us, is where they ended up catching him. 

Undersheriff Ron Cameron told us this morning it was still an open investigation as deputies were trying to sort out the suspect’s story, who Cameron said “appeared to be very high on drugs”.

Baker told us the tow truck driver suspects the call of a wrecked car came from the suspect himself, and no car has been found.

We’ll update our story when the sheriff’s office releases their report.

Photo by Sandy Baker.