A Barrie couple is still reeling after an early morning break-and-enter involving a naked man at their downtown apartment Tuesday morning.
Christopher McGowan and his girlfriend, who live on the third floor at 35 Dunlop St. E., were awakened just before 5 a.m. by a naked man beating on their glass door at the top of the stairs on the outside of the building.
The man smashed the door’s glass and entered the apartment.
McGowan, armed with a golf club, screamed at the man to get back.
“He sounded like a zombie,” he said. “Snarling, drooling, crawling, and he was bleeding.”
He says his girlfriend began recording the incident, and they retreated to the building’s hallway, just outside their apartment and called 911.
They continued recording through the doorway while waiting for the police to arrive.
In the video the man can be heard yelling as he hunches over their kitchen sink, drinking large amounts of water from the tap.
Police then arrived to arrest the man.
“It took about six of them to hold him down,” said McGowan.
He said paramedics also arrived and gave the man ketamine in a needle to try and calm him down.
“They gave him four doses of it over about 20 minutes, and the paramedics were absolutely shocked, and he was still fighting all six officers,” said McGowan.
After the ordeal, McGowan and his girlfriend said they do not feel safe downtown anymore.
“We have to move,” he said. “If I had already gone to work, and it was just my girlfriend there, I would feel absolutely awful. It’s sad, as it’s a nice area, living by the lake, it just sucks there is a drug epidemic and a homeless problem in the core of the downtown.”
They have lived in the apartment for the past three years.
“Every year it gets worse,” he added.
Barrie police said they will not be commenting on the incident.
"The person was taken into custody. There are some underlying circumstances there, and we are not going to be providing any details,” Barrie police communications co-ordinator Peter Leon said.
