A crazed man tried to break into my next-door neighbor's house early Sunday morning.

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I live in a dense neighborhood, mostly built in the 1890s, so my neighbors and I live almost as roommates sometimes, some houses just inches from each other and windows and porches an arm's length away. My house, like those of all the homes on my end of the block, has a public sidewalk just two or three feet from the windows, as well as an open porch. Three neighbors have front doors within 50 feet of mine along my block, and we're pretty good about keeping tabs on the people who move up and down our sidealk, trying to spot potential trouble before it happens. Break-ins are relatively common around here, but we've been lucky on this street, which I chalk up to this active bunch of neighbors. It's a beautiful, friendly neighborhood most days. When the sun goes down, however, things change.

I awoke Sunday morning to find the downspout from the front of my house lying on the ground, torn from the bricks and mangled. As I surveyed the damage and made a mental list of what I'd be shopping for to repair it, my neighbor came outside and asked, "Wondering what might have caused that?" I told her I was trying to piece together the evidence, and she told me of a clearly unbalanced guy who came to her door in the wee hours that morning, before dawn.

He was young, around 25, and not one of our regular local passersby. He pounded on their front door, waking and panicking them. When they came down to check out the noise, they found this guy smacking their door and windows hard enough to nearly break them. My friends called 911 immediately and began to try to talk with the guy. He didn't seem angry, but he would not stop pounding. One of my friends tried to engage him through the front door glass, to stall him while the cops came and try to prevent him from damaging the door or window.

"Are you OK?" my friend asked.

"I'm doing great," the guy said, raising his hand and showing them his wrist, which he cryptically pointed at.

"Well, just stop with the banging," my friend said. "You're going to break something."

But the guy wouldn't let up, moving from the front door to the front window, pushing and pounding. My friends' son was inside and freaked out, the dog was going crazy, and my friend told his wife and son to move back in the house, in case the guy crashed through. He clearly didn't understand where he was or what he was doing.

The police showed up, which didn't seem to faze the guy. He didn't even notice them until they stepped up behind him on the sidewalk. Once they began asking him questions, he stepped away from the door, still apparently unaware that he was doing anything wrong. They moved to cuff him and he began to resist, crashing into the side of my house and pulling the downspout down. He spit at the cops and continued to fight the cuffs as they wrestled him into a flower bed in front of my house.

Finally they got him in the van and left the mess for me to discover the next morning.

It would have been just another story of weirdness on my block except for what my neighbor (the mother) said when I saw her outside on Monday afternoon.

"Did you hear about our visitor?" she asked.

"Yeah, you told me about it Sunday morning, remember?"

"No, he came back."

I feared hearing about another late-night encounter, but she said it happened Monday morning. She answered a knock at the door and found a clean-cut young man, with a new shave and haircut.

"Recognize me?" he asked.

"I'm surprised you could find the house again," my friend said.

The guy apologized, said he had been out with his girlfriend Saturday night, celebrating her finding a new job. The girlfriend had gone home at the end of the night, but the guy stayed out and, at some point, took a Vicodin and kept drinking. He said he had no memory of being on their porch or trying to get into the house, but when he heard the next day what he'd done, he was shocked and embarrassed. He said he thinks he was under the impression his friends lived there. Regardless, he told my friend he was sorry and that he had already checked into a rehab program.

I was happy to hear the ending, but I didn't realize until later I should have asked my friend to get in touch with the guy again so I could get reimbursed for the money I spent fixing the downspout. Instead, I'll be working through the police claims department for my money, and it probably won't be worth the trouble.