Don2, there's been a misunderstanding. I was using "house" more broadly, and counting breaking into the backyard as breaking into the house. I wasn't speaking in a restricted sense of "house". I did not mean to address the question of whether he actually entered the house in that sense. Sorry if that wasn't clear, though that should have been clear by the fact I said "(i.e., man breaking into houses, escaping police, even if they did not see him enter one particular house, in which they only saw him apparently break a window, jump on a trash bin or something, and then jump the fence into another house)".
So, sorry if that is not common usage in English. I will leave the backyard as not part of the house from now on.
Now, since you ask me, he probably did enter the house as well (though I did not mean to say he did, he probably did), for the following reasons: when the video begins, they say "he just broke the window, running south, running for the south"; the moment at which he breaks a window (perhaps more accurately a glass door, or whatever one calls that) is not on the video, but the video starts with him running from that place, and then he jumps on a large object with a rectangular basis (which I thought was a sort of container for trash; after further watching, I'm not sure, but it's the big object close to the fence between the houses; I'll go with ), then uses that as a platform to climb and jump over the fence into the backyard that belongs to the grandmother.
Now, you're saying that maybe he did not break the window (or glass door, or whatever; I'll go with "window" for short), though the helicopter officers said he did. That seems very unlikely, given that the police say that he did, and if he did not and they're lying, the neighbor who owns the house can testify that the window was not broken, the forensic experts can see that it was not broken, etc. If he did break it, he was very probably leaving the next door's house in that manner.
Don2 said:
During the 911 call in question (I followed your links) the caller says he broke 2 of his windows and then car windows across the street or something like that. Are you sure he was talking about house windows and not truck windows of his when he differentiated his windows versus car windows? Are you sure the differentiation wasn't by location and that his own windows broken weren't also car windows? Are you sure the 911 caller was completely accurate in their description and that maybe Stephon was drunk or something like that looking for his own car banging on nearby cars? Finally, the police officer on the phone said that they would get police there which meant they weren't there yet and so why would you conclude this was the house in question? OR that such breaking and entering was part of a getaway strategy if there were no police there to get away from in the first place?
Okay, several questions:
"During the 911 call in question (I followed your links) the caller says he broke 2 of his windows and then car windows across the street or something like that."
True. He says he broke also the window of his truck.
"Are you sure he was talking about house windows and not truck windows of his when he differentiated his windows versus car windows?"
No. On the contrary, I'm pretty sure he was talking about his truck window, as I mentioned. I did not say he was talking about house windows. He did say he broke into a house. He did not see him leave and the dogs kept barking, so he speculated he was still in that particular house he broke into.
If that was the house next door, that's the one he broke into. However, while it's not specified whether that was the house next door, it seems it probably wasn't, as the police officers have to go apparently farther to find him, so there probably were one or two more houses in between, at least, and he very probably broke into that/those as well, going from one backyard to the next.
"Are you sure the differentiation wasn't by location and that his own windows broken weren't also car windows?"
Actually, his windows were truck windows. If you heard the caller right after he talks about his truck windows, he says he broke into some people's backyard "right now".
"Are you sure the 911 caller was completely accurate in their description and that maybe Stephon was drunk or something like that looking for his own car banging on nearby cars?"
That does not seem relevant, my point was to add the information that the caller described him as breaking into someone's backyard.
That aside, it's very difficult to confuse a car with a truck, and also breaking the window of a truck (or a car) is no easy task. If he was drunk enough to be so confused, it's unlikely that he could have made that jump, climb, etc.
"Finally, the police officer on the phone said that they would get police there which meant they weren't there yet and so why would you conclude this was the house in question?"
I do not. That was the first backyard he broke into. If that was the backyard in question, then he broke into that one as well. But it probably wasn't. However, the point is that he had already broken into a backyard while fleeing, and then got to his grandmother's backyard without getting back on the street, so he must have broken into at least one more in the process if that wasn't the house.
At any rate, he entered the backyard next door
somehow, and it seems extremely improbable that he did so with authorization, given that:
a. We see him in the backyard next door (very likely after breaking the window and leaving the house, but even if we leave that aside) running, jumping to the object in the backyard, climbing and jumping the fence. It's extremely unlikely that he would behave like that if he was there authorized by the house's owners. He could have simply stayed there, in the backyard (or in the house).
b. If that was not the first house, he was already breaking into backyards in his escape, so it's not as if he was going to be stopped by lack of authorization - unless, of course, he was also authorized to enter the first backyard by jumping a fence or whatever means led the caller to describe his actions as breaking into, but that's extremely improbable.
"OR that such breaking and entering was part of a getaway strategy if there were no police there to get away from in the first place?"
The caller says he was already running away after he (i.e., the caller) caught him after breaking the truck windows. At that point, he wasn't running from the police yet, though he probably figured that the police would be called.
However, no, I'm not
sure it was part of a getaway strategy. As I said in the first post of mine you replied to:
me said:
He was running, then broke into the house next to his grandmother's, then jumped into her house, and stopped running. We don't know why he did that, but perhaps he did not intend to run anymore, but stay there, playing it cool and pretending he had been there for a while, just minding his own business, so he was not the person being chased for breaking and entering - he did not know the people in the helicopter could see him so clearly until he got there, if he knew about the helicopter at all.
So, I said that "perhaps" that was his getaway strategy. It's a plausible explanation for his behavior, but no certainty on this.
Don2 said:
We can observe from the video you provided he jumped the fence from a yard into another yard, not from a house into another house.
As I've been using them, the word "house" is used more broadly, including the backyard. But if that's not correct in English, sorry about the misunderstanding.