The story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears seems downright quaint compared to the version NBC 4 sports reporter Michael Duarte lived through earlier this week.
Duarte told the Los Angeles NBC affiliate that he returned to his Echo Park home last Saturday night to find his back door smashed and home ransacked.
“My first thought was – did some wild animal come into my home and damage everything?” he said.
His most concerning discovery came when he looked in his bedroom and found a naked man sleeping in his bed.
“To see a man not just sleeping in my bed, but completely naked sleeping in my bed … I was shocked,” he said. “Like Goldilocks from the Three Bears, and someone’s sleeping in my bed instead of the little bear.”
The reporter notified police, who arrived, dressed the man, and took him to jail, though not without some parting shots.
“As he was being walked away in cuffs and thrown into the back of the squad car, he was yelling to me and my friend and also the officers, ‘I’m going to kill you,’” Duarte said.
After further assessing his home, Duarte came to understand the full extent of the damage caused by the nude intruder.
The man clogged the toilet with towels, ate a box of ice cream sandwiches, ate a box of Beyond Beef burger patties and raided Duarte’s stash of chewing gum.
“I had a fresh pack with 60 inside unopened,” he said. “He opened it up, chewed all of them and then spit a big wad of gum about … the size of a softball.”
The intruder also killed a possum on the back patio by using a statue.
According to his NBC 4 bio, Duarte was named 2019 Southern California Sports Journalist of the Year and covers the Los Angeles Lakers, Dodgers, Rams, and more.