Michael Touchette

Roommate From Walmart

I have a spare bedroom that I rent out for extra income for my SSI.
I put an advertisement of Denver Craigslist. And of the several people who responded I decided to bring in a homeless vet, named Michael Touchette, who was living in his car in the Walmart parking lot. He was a few years younger than me.
Michael had a background in construction, which I too have, and because I also had lived in my car back in the eighties I thought we would have more in common than most other people.
At the time he was living in his car with his Chocolate Labrador and since I have a fenced in backyard I could accommodate his dog too.
I felt sorry for him and I even decided to drop his rent $50 a month which is a lot of money to me, being on a fixed income.

I offered to let him move in with no deposit if he cleaned and painted the room he would be staying in. And I offered $50 to fix the bathroom sink which had a small leak.

So he moved in. He had a bunch of stuff in storage, skis and climbing equipment that I let him take out of storage and put in my garage.

He seemed kind of bossy, he liked to act like he was in charge all the time but I've dealt with a lot people and I disregarded that, I was trying to help this dude out as much as possible without compromising my own situation.

The first time I ever started thinking something was wrong with him, he was carrying things in and out of the house and one time he went out the door and evidently the door handle locked and he was locked out. He started pounding on the front door, I was in my room on the internet and I went into the living room and opened the door.
He accused me of locking him out.
:What", I said. "You went out the door, and you think I jumped up, ran in here and locked the door? Dude, I would never do something like that, I'm an adult.I don't play games like that"

Second time was the next day and he was working on the bathroom sink. I was playing the third hand, helping hand him tools and that kind of stuff, and the whole time he was really angry and kept scowling and screaming at me.
After two times of that, I yelled back at him,,"Quit jumping my ass"
WTF, I'm starting to realize this guy is a little off base.
I thought about just telling him to leave right then, but he had painted that room, and he had just paid me a half months rent(He moved in the middle of the month and I prorated it)

As the first month went by I started supplying him with furniture he needed for his room, a computer desk and chair, a printer, stuff I would find on Craigslist for free.

I stressed to him that his rent was due on the first of every month.
He said he could pay me $100 on the tenth and more later. And I was trying to help so I agreed,,BUT, he had MMJ card and He smoked all the time.That stuff is expensive. He would wake up in the middle of the night and smoke it. The smell wafts through the furnace into my room.

I would have to hound him consistently for my rent money the entire time he was here.Never paid on time, only the last month he paid the full amount ten days late.

Something he did that frightened me as far as ones personal health, he would let meats sit out and thaw until they were room temp, sometimes for hours.
Then he would cook it. Particularly scary was that he would do that, cook it into beans, leave that to sit out over night sometimes all the next day, then freeze it in portions and store in the freezer.
He was stockpiling food poisoning. And I know he was already having some type of bowel problems.

He had been working different jobs he could find and he started working out of a temp agency. He landed a steady job out of the temp agency, something in a factory he said, stuffing envelopes at $8.50 an hr.
After one week they switched him from day shift to graveyard shift.
Then after one and half weeks of that, they fired him for threatening fellow employees. He said they were smoking cigarettes when they weren't suppose to and he told them he was going to kick their asses if the did it again.
The temp agency would never send him out on jobs after that.

He has some kind of God complex, where everything he did was right and everybody was suppose to bow to him

His dog, Leo, he kept in his room at all times unless he took it for a walk. I felt sorry for Leo, and would put him in the backyard but evidently the dog suffers from Separation Anxiety and after ten minutes would start crying and continue until I brought it back in.
Needless to say his room was starting to stink like a dog.

He lived here 3 1/2 months. I just started avoiding him as much as possible. He would go into violent verbal outbreaks if you did anything he perceived as wrong. He is bigger than me and I have multiple physical problems and I was very afraid of him.

About the seventh week he underwent a great change. He started acting even weirder and having more violent verbal outbursts.
He quit working and would just lie in bed all day.


He had been trying to land a job for a landscaping company in Steamboat Springs,and I guess they sent him to California for an interview.
I drove him to and from the airport.
On his return trip I had to pull over so he could get sick(not alcohol related) bringing him home.
That was on a Sunday night.

The next day he told he couldn't pay the rent on the first, probably not until the end of the month but then, rest assured ,he was going to pay double and even more.
I was not too happy to hear this latest plan.
The next morning he asked to borrow money for food for his dog, which I didn't have


That Friday, I was in my room and I heard things slamming around in the kitchen. I went in to check on it and he went into a violent tirade about the kitchen cabinet doors he hit his head into and was slamming then repeatedly. He yelled at me that he was still sick, which I had no idea, because I never talked to him all week, and screamed something about me following him around harassing him.
I told him he needed to move. That was about the first of the ninth week.

About a week and a half went by, and he got even stranger. I don't know if he was doing meth or what, but He would ramble on about nothing, everything would be disconnecting. And he was no longer cooking food and eating. Just staying in bed all day.
One night, it was 3:00 he was kicking on my bedroom door, broke the door jam. I jumped up, he had gone into his room, and I asked if he was OK, did I need to call the hospital. I don't remember what he said.
But in the morning I was repairing the door and he yelled from his bed asking what I was doing. "Fixing the door you kicked in last night asshole", I replied.
He just laughed a demonic laugh.

Later that day I we were in the kitchen and he asked if I had a dollar, which once again, it was the end of the month when I am broke and of course I didn't, but I told him he was unable to care for his dog, which had no shots or license, and no dog food, and since he couldn't pay rent on the first, I was going to call Animal Control to make sure the dog was going to be OK.

I was having a hard time communicating with him. He's not processing information, all he can do is retort and ramble on in unorganized thoughts.
I start sleeping with a hammer by my bed.

The next morning or two,I am fixing breakfast and he comes in and asks if it is OK if he and Leo go get some food. I was expecting him to ask for money, but I said do whatever you need, he mumbled something about going to the church.
So he leaves, puts the dog in his truck and walks off.

That night, I haven't heard from him or his dog all day and I go out and shine a flashlight in his truck to see if the dog was still there thinking it might need to relieve itself. He and the dog are sleeping in the truck in front of my house.

He had been packing stuff and a couple days later I noticed the back door was unlocked and I locked it and went back into my house.

Soon he yells at me to quit locking the back door when he's going in and out of it. I thought he was in his room, and I came out and told him so and sorry I locked it.
Then he tells me I am going to be sorry when the police get here. And he rattled some other stuff, along with he was going to beat my ass if he ever saw me out in public. Just his usual weirdness.

Minutes later I happen to glance out the back door and there is a guy wearing a hoodie in the backyard playing stick with Leo.
I thought it was Michael.
He never took Leo out and played stick with him and I went out the back door.
It was not him but someone I had never seen before. I told this guy I didn't mean to lock them out but I didn't know they were out there.
I talked to the guy briefly and I went in the house.

There I encountered Michael and he started babbling about he had a friend in the backyard and something about the guy was a black guy and not to freak out. Like I would have cared what color the guy was.
Turns out he met the guy walking his dog down the street just a few minutes before then.
So I went back in the house and put my boots on and went into the backyard to offer to help.
They were sitting on my deck and the sun was almost down and it was getting cold. He told me he was waiting for a job he was supposed to work, to call him and that they didn't need any help.

So I go back in to my room get on the internet. Then someone knocks on the front door. I get up go into the living room and he is already there answering the door.
Two police officers walk in.

He starts doing his rambled talking, and tell the cops he was trying to move and I was harassing him and getting in the way, and I was making mean gestures towards his dog. That must be because the hyper-strung animal always is so excited when he lets it out of the room I have to raise my arms with my hands flat opened so it doesn't lick me. Just common reaction to dogs who are too friendly.

After a few minutes the cops are starting to realize the guy is off his rocker. They start questioning him why he would call the police if there was no aggressive actions or nothing had been broken.

That's when his most bizarre reasoning came out. His phone had gotten broken, he told the cop. He had thrown it against the wall in his frustration. The cops told him that if he broke his own phone, he thought I was getting in his way and upsetting his dog they couldn't be called for that, they were busy with real crimes.

At this point they just wanted to leave. They asked if we could get along now with no problems and I mentioned he told me he was going to beat my ass, just a half hour earlier.

One cops asked him and he admitted it. They informed him that was threatening someone which is a crime.

Now they asked him if he could get his things together and be out by midnight. He said he couldn't and they told him to pack what he needed for that night.

We went into the backyard to look for the guy wearing the hoodie but he had already gone through the gate and gotten in Michaels truck.
Mike said he needed to store his tools in my garage which I said was OK and I went out the back to the garage while Michael rolled his tool boxes around and into my garage.
I asked him if that was all and he said "Yes. I'll get an invoice for these tomorrow"-- Whatever that meant. His thinking was so erratic. It was just such a strange thing to say considering was going on.
And I closed the garage door.

So off he went to Walmarts parkiing lot to spend the night, I guess.
The police told him to call me before he came over to pick the rest his stuff up and to come alone.
At this time, two days later his stuff is still here. An officer came by yesterday to get my phone number which I guess was on his phone and since he broke that he no longer had it.

I think what he was doing was, he had this guy he just met come over and he was trying to get me arrested and then he was going to pilfer my house.
It turns out he stole one of those portable battery chargers from me and it appears he stole a package that was delivered to my house by USPS from my sister.
I reported it to the post office but without a witness to him actually carrying it off they can't do anything.

I have a garage full of assorted tools and stuff, too much for me to maintain an inventory most of it old and used, so no telling what else he took.

Will update as things progress