A naked man was removed from underneath an elderly woman's California house and taken into police custody after she had been complaining about strange noises in her home for months, officials say.
A 93-year-old Los Angeles resident had been complaining about strange noises she had been hearing in her home for months, including banging and scraping noises. Relatives brushed it off as likely having been caused by an animal.
The woman, who lives alone, was being visited by family when the noises got increasingly louder and more unsettling.
"It was usually late at night, and we just chucked it off to animals being under the house," Ricardo Silva, the woman's son-in-law, told NBC News.
"The noises were kind of like knocking. It was kind of like, as my wife was walking, they were kind of knocking back from under the house so she says, 'You know something's wrong,'" Silva continued.
Family members alerted law enforcement, who arrived to find 27-year-old Issac Betancourt, nude, underneath the house.
"He refused to leave. He wasn't scared of the dogs, and the first two attempts at gas didn't fish him out," Silva said.
Betancourt was eventually pulled out from underneath the house after police enlisted the use of teargas to remove him. The family suspects he had been staying there for up to 6 months, leaving in the early morning and returning at night.
"It's a bizarre thing, but it's not probably uncommon, you know. In this day and age, people are looking for shelter," Silva said.
Betancourt was arrested by law enforcement for trespassing, and taken into custody. The family will be securing the crawl space beneath the house to avoid similar future situations.
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