Drunken man finds his way home, just not his home

GAITHERSBURG, Md. (AP) _ Unlike Goldilocks, a man who stumbled into the wrong suburban Washington, D.C., home after drinking too much found the bed there just right.

Bob and Joanne Breiner returned home from a night out to find a man with a white beard nestled in their bed, sound asleep. Once police showed up and the drunken stranger realized what had happened, he apologized profusely and complimented the couple on their comfortable bed.

"I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry," Joanne Breiner recalled him saying.

The man accidentally went to the Breiners' house after apparently getting off at a bus stop eight miles from his own home, police said. He entered through the unlocked front door.

Joanne Breiner said she first realized something was amiss the night of Sept. 27 after noticing crumpled aluminum foil and crumbs on the kitchen counter, along with a missing crab cake.

Minutes later, she recalled Thursday, her husband walked upstairs to the master bedroom, flipped on the light and noticed the intruder.

The man didn't stir, and Joanne Breiner says her husband wasn't even sure whether he was alive.

Quickly — and quietly — Bob alerted Joanne and the couple's 16-year-old son. They fled into the rainy darkness, not pausing to grab their car keys or other belongings.

Besides being scared out of her wits, Joanne Breiner said, she found the incident bizarre. "At first we thought, 'That's so strange, so weird, we couldn't even imagine,'" she said.

Police quickly arrived, made their way to the master bedroom and woke the man by shaking him. Breiner said he asked the officers what they were doing in his house.

The family decided not to press charges after learning the man had lost his job three weeks earlier, and police declined to identify him. Joanne Breiner even packed up some ribs and leftover soup for officers to give him.

"We are so grateful and lucky that nothing happened," she said. "It could've been a horrible incident."