53-Year-Old Edgewood Man Dies During Fight With Neighbor
EDGEWOOD, Md. (WJZ)-- A wild fight between two next door neighbors ends with one person dying.
Weijia Jiang has more on how it happened.
Janette Green is in disbelief after learning her friend 53-year-old Joseph Breckenridge died Tuesday evening, made even more distraught by the bizarre circumstances.
"It just got really rough," Breckenridge's neighbor Rhiannon Broadnas said. "They were just holding him down and when the cops got there, he was gone."
Broadnas watched the scene unfold in the 2000 block of Edgewood's Rockwell Street.
Police say Breckenridge walked into his next door neighbors' unlocked home, uninvited. The woman of the house alerted her husband, who asked Breckenridge to leave. When he refused, a fight between the two men broke out.
"It was a struggle. It was physical. There were no weapons involved," Monica Worrell of the Harford County Sheriff's Office said. "We'll need to wait for results from the office of the medical examiner to determine what the cause of death is, but science takes time."
Neighbors say Breckenridge would often walk up and down this street, knocking on doors, trying to get in.
"He would knock on my door," Angie Epps, Breckenridge's neighbor, said. "I don't even know him and he would want to use the phone. 'Can I use your phone?' I mean, bang, bang, bang."
Green says he suffered from mental illness.
"How can I look at Mr. Joe as a criminal?" she said. "He's never disrespected me. He'd use my phone or I'd give him something to eat."
Police continue to investigate what went wrong.
"It's horrible," Broadnas said. "I didn't want that man to die. He has a family. Why would I want that on anybody?"
At this point, police do not plan to file any charges in this case, but say that could change depending on what the autopsy report reveals.
Breckenridge was transported to the hospital where he later died.
