The police in Los Angeles arrested a man on Friday who had been living under the home of a 92-year-old woman, who had assumed that the strange noises she had been hearing inside her house in recent weeks were caused by animals.
Police officers responded to a call around 10:30 p.m. on Thursday about an unknown person in the crawl space of a home in the El Sereno neighborhood and found a naked man who refused to come out, said Officer David Cuellar, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Department.
A SWAT team was brought in to assist the police, and after several hours, officers used gas to force the man, Isaac Betancourt, 27, out from under the house and then took him into custody, Officer Cuellar said.
Mr. Betancourt was arrested on a trespassing charge at 4:25 a.m. on Friday morning and released the next day, according to Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department records. He had been arrested at least five times in the past few years. He could not immediately be reached for comment.
The 92-year-old woman and her family had heard strange noises for weeks, usually late at night, and assumed the sounds were caused by animals, her son-in-law, Ricardo Silva, said in an interview with NBC Los Angeles.
On Thursday night, family members at the house heard even louder knocking noises and thought something was wrong and called the police, Mr. Silva said. The family plans to secure the crawl space, which is about two feet high and has three entryways, he said.
It was not clear how long Mr. Betancourt had been under the house.
“It’s a bizarre thing, but it’s not probably uncommon, you know, in this day and age, people are looking for shelter,” Mr. Silva said.
Homes in California are about twice as expensive as the typical American home, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office, a nonpartisan state agency.
In May, a woman was found living in the rooftop sign of a grocery store in Michigan, which she had outfitted with flooring, a Keurig coffee maker and a computer. She had been living there about a year and was not charged, the police said.
In March 2023, a man said he had lived in Philadelphia’s Veterans Stadium from 1979 into 1981 after getting a job there that gave him access to an empty concession stand.
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