A Westchester
Township man who Chesterton Police said entered a stranger’s home on Dakota
Street while under the influence of drugs was arrested Friday on charges of
residential entry and resisting law enforcement.
According to
police, at 2:07 a.m. officers were dispatched to the 2300 block of Dakota
Street after a homeowner reported that a male subject wearing a black
tee-shirt had just fled westbound on foot after entering an unsecured
four-seasons room of the house and pounding on an interior door.
Officers began to
walk the neighborhood and in the 2400 block observed a trouserless man in a
black tee-shirt “sitting Indian style on the front step” of a house. That
man refused to say whether he lived at the house, however, and told officers
“to leave him alone,” police said.
Given the fact that
the man “partially matched the description” of the suspect, “was not wearing
any pants, was the only subject in the area with a black shirt, and refused
to provide any information,” officers opted to put him in handcuffs, police
said. The man struggled, however, and officers took him “to the ground in a
controlled manner” and then, when he still refused to be cuffed, used “a
baton to pry his arm out from under him,” police said.
A pair of jeans not
belonging to the homeowner was subsequently found in his driveway next to a
vehicle, police noted.
Although the man
did identify himself as “Mitchell T. Howell, 20, of 1189N 250E, his
“comments/statements” to officers “did not make sense,” prompting his
transport to the Franciscan Alliance ER department on Indian Boundary Road,
police said. There “he was unable to answer normal questions when asked by
the ER physician,” at “three different times” saying 1996 when asked what
year it was, police said.
Howell received
treatment at the ER--after which “the mental status
and demeanor of Mr. Howell was very different,” police said--and
on his discharge was transported to Porter County Jail, police said.
Howell “admitted
that he was under the influence of ‘shrooms’” at the time of the incident
and “also advised that he wished to apologize to the homeowner for his
trouble,” police added.