TURBOT TOWNSHIP -- A man is under arrest after a bizarre attempted break-in overnight.
Gary Gonzalez of Turbot Township is locked up, charged with trying to break into a neighbor's home while waving a machete.
It happened around 1 a.m. Wednesday at the home along Golf Course Road in Turbot Township.
State police say they got several calls from concerned neighbors and people at Gonzelez's home. They say he ran up the road yelling people were after him, trying to kill him, and when he got to David Everitt's home, he tried to break in through the front door.
When that didn't work, Everitt said Gonzalez smashed his front window and started to come in.
"When he came in through the window, I said, ‘I’m gonna shoot if you come in any further,’ and he said, ‘I can come in. I'm coming in,’ and when he pulled his arm back to get another swipe at the window, that's when I shot and he disappeared."
David Everitt was in his living room in a chair at the time, awake from the pain of his recent rotator cuff surgery.
He heard a commotion outside his home near Milton and says soon he saw his neighbor, Gary Gonzalez, running up his lawn and trying to break in through his front door waving a large machete.
Everitt grabbed his gun and said in a matter of moments, Gonzalez smashed his front window and tried to come in.
"I was as close as I am talking to you people to that man, that's how close I was when I pulled that trigger so I could just easily have shot him in the face, in the torso, and I did not do that, and I think they said he had powder burns in the crease of his arm. I'm glad of that. I don't want to shoot anybody, but he needed to stay out,” he said.
State police say Gonzalez was not shot.
Everitt says he knew his neighbor as a soft-spoken man who always said hello, but as he tried to force his way into Everitt's home, Everitt says Gonzalez looked different with his eyes looking huge as he screamed people were trying to kill him.
"He was in another world, in another world, I mean to tell you."
David Everitt says his house was not the first one Gonzalez tried to break into. He says Gonzalez tried unsuccessfully to break into all his neighbor's homes first before coming to the Everitt home.
"They tell me the cops had three or four calls because he tried to get in everyone's house from where he lives until he got here."
After running off, Everitt says state police brought in a search dog and found Gonzalez hours later.
He was arrested and charged with attempted burglary and assault.
"I'm glad it turned out the way it did for our case, the window can be replaced, the door can be fixed and hopefully he can get some kind of a life back. I'll be alright with it."