A Cold Night in Englewood
A   true story by Maruicio Bell
In 1972 when my grandfather was a successful business man, he owned his own construction and gravel company. We lived on 56th May Street in the Englewood area.

My family was a happy giving family, and life was going great for the Pain family.
On February 4 1972, it was regular day, my grandfather went to work, and my grandmother went to the grocery store to get groceries for my grandad’s birthday the next day. My grandmother came home and prepared dinner, while the family was watching television. My grandmother said, “Lonzo time for bed.” I went to bed mad at grandma.
Later that night while everyone was asleep, a man entered our house through the kitchen window and snuck in the food pantry until the wee hours of the morning. My grandmother was waking out of her sleep and walked through the house to see where the noise was coming from in the back of the house. When my grandmother made it to the kitchen she seen our food on the floor in garbage bags. Then a man jumped out of the pantry at my grandmother with a butcher knife, he pulled her in the pantry and made her strip out of her clothes, my grandmother did what he said for fear of her life, and the man raped her in that pantry. Next, the man continued to walk through our house and went into my teenage uncle’s room, while holding the knife to my grandmother’s neck, and had my uncle strip out of his clothes as well. The man had my grandmother tie my naked teenage uncle up in rope. Once that was done the man and my grandmother continued through the house to my grandparents’ room where my sick grandfather was sleeping and made him strip out of his pajamas, and made my grandmother tie him up as well.  At that I was awaking out of my sleep to my terrified grandmother repeatedly saying, “We don’t have any money.”
My sleeping aunt was awaken and told me not to say anything and pretend like I was still sleeping. The man became even more agitated and desperate for money, he went into my aunt’s room and took her purse off the dresser looking for money. I then heard him whisper into my aunt’s ear, “Do you value your mother life?”
At that time my aunt was shaking and trembling, the man put the blanket over my aunt’s head, while my aunt said, “yes I valuemy mother’s life”.
The man then put my grandmother on the floor and raped my grandmother in front of my aunt and I. The man then told my grandmother not to move, and he got in the bed and raped my aunt while I was in the bed with them. The man then started to walk throughout the house turning on the lights our house, taking pictures of everything and everyone in the house saying,“If you call the police and tell I am going to come back and kill everyone in this house.”
The man was all of a sudden drawn to my toy helicopter in the living room and began to play with it in our house. My grandfather somehow got loose and ran in the room, and I heard a big loud scream, and my grandfather hit the man in the head with a big piggy bank full of pennies. My uncle somehow got loose and began to help my grandfather fight the man. My uncle got stabbed about eighteen times, then man tried to run out of our backdoor, my grandfather began to chase the him unarmed. The man stabbed my grandfather in the heart, ran out the backdoor, and threw the knife in the back yard. Our next door neighbor came to our house and took me to his house for safety and called the police. The man was gone, the police found the man a week, but the man had struck again but this time he robbed and killed and elderly couple on the next block.
Although this tragic event happened when I was five years old it has always been with me and I have never slept more than four hours a night all due to that cold night in Englewood.