NBC 4 reporter has a ‘Goldilocks' moment after finding naked man in his bed

Los Angeles Times

14-05-2025

The break-in felt like something out of 'Goldilocks and Three Bears,' at least that's how Michael Duarte tells it.
Duarte, an NBC 4 sports writer, told his news station that he had been away from home for a few days and returned this past Saturday to find someone had broken into his Echo Park home.
Duarte said he could see through a glass door in the back of his home that the kitchen had been ransacked. At first, he thought a wild animal had made its way inside and damaged things, but a broken glass panel next to the doorknob indicated a break-in.
'I thought someone had broken into my home, robbed me and left,' he told the station. Duarte could not immediately be reached by phone at the news station or through his Instagram account.
When Duarte made his way to the front door, he told the station that he noticed another glass panel had been broken and in the distance he noticed something peculiar.
It wasn't a bear, just a naked man, sleeping on 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.'
Duarte told a friend waiting in a car with his pets to call police, who arrived to arrest the man. As the man was being led away in handcuffs, he threatened to kill him and his friend, according to Duarte.
A spokesperson for the Los Angeles Police Department did not immediately respond to the Times inquiry on the arrest.
Shortly after the intruder's arrest, Duarte began to survey the damage in his home. He said the man appeared to have been in his home for many hours, helping himself to food in his fridge.
'He ate a box of ice cream sandwiches, he ate Dole whipped, a whole box of Beyond Beef burgers he stuffed in the microwave and cooked them,' Duarte said.
The man also found Duarte's stash of chewing gum.
'I had a fresh pack with 60 inside, unopened,' he told NBC. 'He opened it up, chewed all of them and then spit a big wad of gum about … the size of a softball.'
On the back patio, he said the man used a statue to kill a possum and found bags containing what he suspects were drugs.
The odd break-in underscores the recent jump in property break-ins in the area patrolled by LAPD's Rampart Station, according to LAPD's latest crime statistics.
From March 16 to May 10, there was a jump in burglaries and break-ins from 23 incidents to 33, a 43% rise. Despite the increase, property crimes remained at 114 incidents compared to last year when there were 217 reported cases.