December 30 2009
By: Mike Nowatzki

A Fargo apartment dweller who set beer cans in front of his door to alert him to intruders ended up tussling with an alleged burglar early Tuesday, police said.

A neighbor in the apartment called police at 1:24 a.m. to the 2500 block of 15th Street South to report two elderly, naked men attacking each other.

As it turned out, the men weren’t naked – one was in his underwear and the other fully clothed – but they were fighting between an efficiency apartment unit and the hallway, Sgt. Bill Ahlfeldt said.

An investigation found the suspect had entered the tenant’s apartment while he was sleeping, he said.

“The renter of the apartment had set up a stepstool with empty beer cans on it and set that in front of the door so that if anybody were to open the door it would knock all the beer cans off and that would wake him up, which it did, so I guess it worked,” Ahlfeldt said.

“He called it his burglar alarm. He said that he doesn’t really lock his doors, so he just does that instead,” he said.

The fight began when the tenant turned the light on and found the suspect in a closet next to the front door, Ahlfeldt said.

Both men sustained cuts and bruises, but neither received medical treatment, he said.

Daniel Gable, 61, who lives a floor below in the same building, was arrested on suspicion of burglary and taken to the Cass County Jail.

Police would not identify the victim.

Ahlfeldt said alcohol was a factor in the incident, and it’s possible Gable believed he was entering his own apartment. It didn’t appear he was trying to steal anything, he said.

A message left for Gable at the jail wasn’t returned.

http://www.inforum.com/event/article/id/264234/