One look at what was hiding in the crawl space of this woman in Southern California is enough to give anyone the creeps. Ashly Guardino thought it was her landlord fixing the roof on Saturday morning when she woke up to strange noises at her Lake Elsinore house.
Guardino was shocked to see what she called a “f-king dirty ass arm” extending from underneath the rental house, rather than the property owner tinkering on top of it as she had expected. Professional housekeeper: “There is a whole ass man living here for months… living underneath the house” in a shocking TikTok confessional.
“Do you know how creepy it is to see a f–king arm come out of [a hole in your house]?,” she asked. “Imagine being half awake and seeing an arm, a dirty arm come out of this hole.”
The terrified mother posted a video of cops pulling a shirtless man from a small gap at the base of the home she shares with her fiancee Savannah and their two children; the video has garnered over 6.2 million views. The officers loaded the filthy criminal into an awaiting police car.
The tweet below verifies the news:
I called the cops when I found a guy living under my house — people are calling me racist https://t.co/yTJhJ0mnEq via @nypost
— D.B. Taylor, now with 16% more Hottentot! (@DBTayor) August 17, 2023
As part of the continuous “phrogging” problem, in which gate-crashers illegally enter a property and stay there indefinitely out of sight, this disturbing find is not surprising. Named for the behavior of hopping from lily pad to lily pad, this fad is reportedly becoming a major issue for law enforcement.
In the true-crime film “Phrogging: Hider in my House,” which aired in July on Lifetime, the network even addressed a particularly disturbing case from Hawaii. The tendency seems to be more common in regions that have both a housing shortage and favorable climate.
A man in his thirties was found phrogging last month in a secure vault beneath the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles. In later fragments, Guardino provided additional information about her nameless alien invader. He’s a parolee and he’s 26 years old.
She went on to say that the man had a history of finding refuge under other people’s homes due to his addiction to drugs and that he had apparently burned down the home he shared with his baby mom.
Guardino was still rattled up from finding the unwanted visitor when she learned that, after doing time for setting fire to his ex-girlfriend’s house, the man had been living in the basement of a house across the street from hers. The business owners eventually learned of his scheme, and he was sent back to prison.
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After being freed once again, the recalcitrant intruder returned to the area and proceeded to build a new nest directly beneath Guardino’s house. Officials were unable to verify the man’s residency status. But Guardino ventured a guess.
She responded, “I don’t really know how long he was [here],” implying that the unwanted guest had been hiding out below ground for at least three months. Guardino discovered that the screen blocking the entrance to the crawl space had been removed multiple times over the course of a few weeks.
She was a pet owner, so naturally she suspected one of her pets had done it. “We remember hearing some knocking and whistling and different noises going on in the house,” she said. “But we’d just brush it of [thinking it was] the TV, the wind or whatnot.”
Guardino continued, “Once he revealed himself, I confronted him angrily until the police arrived to help me.” “I’m yelling at him, ‘What the f–k are you doin?…Get the f–k out of our house,” she recalled.
Guardino said online that police arrived but didn’t take the situation seriously at first, perhaps because they didn’t believe a man was living in the basement. However, as the authorities became aware of the intruder, they immediately took action.
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“They threatened [him with] dogs and guns because he [wasn’t] responding. He was just quiet,” said Guardino. “And they’re yelling at him to come out, and he’s ignoring the police.” After a 30-minute standoff, the suspect emerged from the basement and was taken into custody.
Side-eyeing naysayers accused Guardino of being callous and even racist for reporting the criminal, rather than empathizing with her and her family after the tragic event. Somebody commented, “Did dirty mean black?” implying that the squatter was African American.
“The slights of, ‘seeing a DIRTY arm at 6 a.m. in the dark while half asleep,’ and then THE REVEAL of the person. Another onlooker snarled, “You should be ashamed of yourself.” Guardino did not specify the criminal’s race.
Guardino had to defend herself against the unbelievable allegations in a subsequent post. “Whether he was white, black or Mexican, it doesn’t really matter…his arm was dirty, and that’s why I referred to his arm as dirty,” she said.
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