My (F 25) best friend (F 26) has been with an abusive boyfriend on and off for over a year now. This past year he started dealing and doing a lot of coke, and he was always psychotic, now it’s tenfold.
My friend was finally at her limit and came to stay at my place (3 hrs away) for the night. We went out bar hopping and having a good time.
The next day she checks her ring camera and sees he broke in to her apartment and appears to have stayed the night. Entering at around 2pm, leaving at around 5-6am the next day. It’s possible he came and left in between but the ring camera didn’t capture it.
She told me she has an iPad there that she disconnected from her iCloud awhile ago, but we find out he reconnected it at some point in time. So he was able to track everywhere we went, everything we did, her and I were texting each other pics n location.
That definitely would’ve set him off. He is already always mad at her.
We also see that around 5am she received a few emails asking for login verification codes for her different email addresses.
Later that day she goes to her apartment and it stinks, like gas, and she’s feeling lightheaded. She also has pets. She calls a technician and he said her dryer valve is loose which caused the gas leak. She’s lived there for over a year. She told me in the past she has faintly smelled gas in her laundry room, but that this was different, intense, and filled the whole apartment.
TLDR: Idk anything about dryer valves… is there ANY universe where this was an accident or coincidental? Or did this man loosen her dryer valve?
IMPORTANT EDIT: I understand everyone is saying to contact the police, etc. I totally agree. But my question is about the dryer valve, if there’s any universe where that happens accidentally.
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Added: The gas dryer valve shouldn’t let gas leak,no.If it’s loose , it’s been loosened.
This is a matter for the police.
Abusive ex breaks in to your residence , there’s a gas leak when he leaves.
And this probably isn’t over , so get the cops involved now , before she gets hurt.
If she’s smelled gas there before then I’d say it’s a possibility that whatever leak there was before got bigger/smelled more because it was closed up/etc. But… the rest makes it sound less likely that it was an accident/coincidence. It’s also possible that she’s smelled gas there before because HE was the cause of the “faulty” valve then too.
Perhaps a tip off to the police is in order…
This should involve a police report, because he’s now breaking and entering – which she has saved on video. She should remove her pets immediately and stay with you while filing a restraining order (or whatever is equivalent in your area) against him. It’s going to be hard to prove attempted murder, but she’s got a very solid case to charge him with breaking and entering. (NAL. Do not play one on TV either.)
Obligatory not a lawyer.
Tell her to contact her landlord or apartment manager to get the locks changed and ask if they have any security footage from that night near her unit. Then take whatever they can provide, along with all her evidence and file a police report.
The police may not be able to do much right away, but having this report on record can help if he attempts other break-ins.
Wherever possible, switch to 2FA for logins. Yes, it’s a pain, but it can give proof that someone is trying to access her accounts.
Freeze all credit monitoring and any cards she doesn’t need to use regularly. This is just in case he has enough info to use her credit for stuff.
A nanny cam might be useful inside her apartment in case he breaks in again.
Once protections are in place, a cease and desist letter might be useful. If she can prove she informed him not to trespass, it might make it easier to prosecute if he’s caught at her apartment again.
Police, police, police.
If he knew about the valve he very well may have made it worse on purpose. Short of a confession from him she will never know for sure. She shouldn’t have to know though to act.
She needs to not touch anything more and call the police. She needs to use a burner phone and probably leave her apartment if possible and go into hiding.
The fact she’s dating someone who deals drugs, and you guys went out partying, does she do anything illegal? If so, she’s probably reluctant to call the police out. The reality is, he’s a danger to her.
I can tell you from experience, I left my ex after my Dr suspected he was poisoning me, and I confronted him about abuse. It became bad fast, and I hid someplace with our child until he moved out, then returned with police to make sure he was gone. I dealt with a gas leak and more within a month, by 10 months the DA pressed charges, and only dropped them to secure my divorce.
Our child is grown, and every 6 months to a year the police are investigating trying to get proof against him for something else, and this is after moving into a place where the state put a fake name on the lease, etc.
So, if you ask me, yeah, he probably tried to kill her, or at least her pets.
Gather up all the evidence, call the police. Then file a restraining order.
Question – is she asking or are you?
I’m in my 50s. When I was 18 I had a crush on some guy I barely really knew. He said a couple dubious things but I let it slide. My friends had enough and told me this made up story about him doing something awful like killing and burying his cat or something. It was complete fiction, but I believed it.
When they finally let me know they were just joking around, it hit me: if I believed that was even a possibility to be true about this guy, then it might as well have been in terms of me relating to him. A great person you would never believe that about.
My point is: if you friend even remotely believes that it’s even possible this guy could try to kill her (and we all know it is, but that’s not the point here), then she needs to have a moment to process that and realise she has two choices:
(1) get out safely, starting with calling the police OR
(2) die or be permanently harmed or maimed or imprisoned
It will come to that and if she can even believe it’s possible she needs to take action right away.
There is no third option where he loves her or changes or becomes better or recovers. Only those two. If it’s not this gas leak it will be the next.
He didn’t just try to kill your friend but her pets. He is dangerous and she is probably not telling you all. I dated someone like him and he was nice then it all started happening. The beatings, the delusions, the attempted strangulations, the anger and threats. Even my dog was afraid of him. Once they have you, it’s really hard to leave.
He got better, I helped him get sober and his life straightened out but it had caused me lots of damage. She needs to stop protecting him before he hurts her real bad.
Breaking up was really tough and afterwards I was left really empty. It was hard to recover from everything.
Please be safe as you are at risk since he sees you as a threat. She has to be ready to leave him completely.
if any of her appliances are gas based (like a furnace or a stove) it’s possible for the pilot light to go out just like that; and in particular if her valve’s been loose enough for there to has always been a faint smell in the laundry room it’s possible Man On Angry Rampage simply loosened it further without said man loosening it on purpose
that said. just because it’s possible that this particular facet of the of breaking and entering was unintentional doesn’t mean it matters whether it’s possible or not, this dude’s clearly dangerous
Please talk to a domestic violence shelter/organization. This is very very serious
The most dangerous time for an abuse sufferer is when she tries to leave. (Separation Homicide is listed by the FBI as one of the most common causes of death for single females.)
Def NOT a coincidence. (He may even have been loosening it previously in order to create doubt.)
I do not think the two things are related here. If she smelled the gas before, the valve was likely loose beforehand and getting worse over time. Coke rage also tends not to lead to sneaking around and subtle acts of violence.
But holy shit the amount of red flags here are deeply concerning and she needs to leave. While I am not sure this dude tried to poison her with gas, he fit the profile to just beat the shit out of her one day.
Know the girl does not want to get the law involved, but she really needs help here. Maybe you can get to talk to a domestic violence group for advice.
Watch the pets for any signs of nausea, vomiting or dizziness if this was recent, and take then to the vet if they do.
I don’t know, but we do know it’s possible. She’s not ready to leave or put herself first, but what about the pets? Can she re-home them? That man will kill them. There is a strong correlation between domestic abuse and animal abuse of pets in the same home.
Your friend needs to make a police report. This is the sort of thing that happens right before something REALLY bad happens. She shouldn’t go back into that house for any reason unless there’s a cop with her to assess the situation. Even then, i’d have her stay at someone else’s house that this “boyfriend” wouldn’t suspect. I don’t want you to put yourself in harms way. If he’s sadistic enough to be doing this to her, doing something to you too will probably just please him more.
This is the “lethality assessment” some police departments (the few good ones) use to help evaluate how much danger someone is in at the hands of their abusive partner. I think you should ask your friend to take it https://thelaurelcenter.org/lethality-assessment/