APOPKA, Fla. – A Seminole County woman was startled Saturday to find a man asleep in her 4-year-old son's closet.
Carolyn Bonaventura, of Apopka, told News 6 she and her family, including two toddlers, returned home Saturday afternoon after being gone for a few hours. She tried to put her 4-year-old son down for a nap, but he was being fussy and throwing toys around.
"He went into his closet to get a toy and that's when I found a man sleeping in his closet, which I would have never seen had my son not been pitching a fit," Bonaventura said. "I calmly picked up my son. I don't know what made me do this, but I calmly picked up my son and walked over to my husband in my daughter's room-- who's 2-- and told him, 'There is someone sleeping in Andrew's closet.'"
The family left the house and called 911.
“We just came home and we found some guy sleeping in my son’s closet,” Bonaventura's husband told the 911 dispatcher.
The homeowner said the man was lying facedown in the closet, possibly crying, according to the 911 call.
Seminole County Sheriff's Office deputies arrived to find the man still sleeping in the closet, according to the arrest report.
"It took a while to wake him up and they had to drag him out of the house because he was so out of it," Bonaventura said.
Deputies later identified the suspect as Charles Maynard, 38, of Merritt Island.
Earlier that morning, Maynard had walked into a nearby 7-Eleven and tried to cash a wet lotto ticket, the store manager, Reynaldi Pailian said.
After Maynard walked outside into the parking lot, Pailian said, he started to cause a scene.
"(On) Saturday morning, a guy was shadowboxing himself, saying he wants to fight Mike Tyson and all of a sudden he fell to the ground and started shaking," Pailian said. "Then he got right back up."
Pailian called 911, but before deputies arrived, he said, Maynard had run a few feet away and jumped a brick fence that led into the Bonaventura's neighborhood.
According to deputies, before being placed into handcuffs and taken out of the house, Maynard asked where he was and said, "I would never go into someone's house. I wouldn't trespass."
The homeowners told News 6 that, before they left that day, they didn't lock the back door and that this was a good reminder for busy people to take a second and to make sure they lock up.