A 65-year-old man trained in Martial Arts is being credited with stopping a burglar terrorizing a Palomar Mountain community.
Glen Heggstad has owned property on the mountain for the better part of a decade. His friend Phil owns a plot of land next door. They plan to retire on the mountain one day.
"This is my own private paradise that's how everybody on Palomar Mountain feels," Heggstad explained. "I enter my gates and I enter a state of euphoria."
Phil stopped by on Saturday and noticed his gate was open. His generator was running and his tractor was out. Burglars were on the property.
"They had left a glass of ice tea out on the counter in Phil's cabin," Heggstad said.
"They had ransacked Phil's cabin. We followed their tracks and they had come up to my building site and then turned around."
Heggstad believes something spooked the looters. He called the San Diego County Sheriff's Department (SDSO) and they filed a report.
Local
"Phil kept telling me that those guys are coming back for my generator," Heggstad recalled.
He was right. The next day, he got an alert from a neighbor that a black truck was parked back at Phil's property. Glen went to confront the driver.
"We had words and he took a couple swings which was his first mistake. So we had a little scuffle," Heggstad said. "He was beginning to see things my way, but he reached for a pocket knife that was attached to the outside of his hip. At that point I determined he wanted to go to level-eight, so we did."
The alleged burglar is 36-year-old Geoffry Brister.
"I wanted to make sure he got the message very clear He was not to come back to Palomar Mountain," Heggstad said. "I wanted his friends to see him and look at him and say, 'What happened to you?'"
Brister's arrest helped deputies uncover a trove of stolen goods.
The SDSO said Brister is suspected in connection with a handful of other burglaries in the area as well.
