Good Guy with a Gun #227: Rockford, MI
This is one of the most terrifying incidents I’ve covered. Good news first: The girls lived, and the Marine recruiter who wanted to kill and rape them is in jail. | Original incident: June 15, 2024
These posts are based on our Good Guy with a Gun calendar. Today’s post is significantly updated from the calendar version.
I’m going to say up front that the girls lived.
When Dan1 and his wife went to bed that night, their daughter and her friend, both eleven years old, were having a sleepover down the hallway.
They woke when the girls started screaming.
Dan grabbed a gun and ran into the girls’ bedroom.
There he saw a man in a shirt — no pants, underwear, shoes, or socks — on top of his daughter’s friend.
The next few moments aren’t clear to me, but they apparently weren’t that clear to Dan, either. Somehow he got the man off of the girl, and he had him at gunpoint. But listen to the 911 call to see how he experienced these moments:
Dan: Help — there’s someone in our house and I think he raped the little girls in the house.
[Address and other questions omitted]
Dispatch: Is the person still in your home?
Dan: Yeah, he literally passed out on the floor.
Dispatch: Did they just make an entrance into your home?
Dan: No, I think they raped the little girl. There’s blood all over…
Dispatch: There’s blood all over?
Dan: Yeah, the little girl is fine, but…
Dispatch: Can you see if she’s injured?
Dan: No, she’s fine, she’s okay.
Dispatch: Okay. You think that he assaulted her, though?
Dan: Yeah.
Dispatch: Okay, I’ve got officers right around there, so give me a second, okay?…
So he’s in your house, where is he in your house?
Dan: He’s in the bedroom with her friend.
Dispatch: Okay. And how are the girls, how are they doing?
Dan: They’re laying in bed and he’s laying on the floor.
Dispatch: Okay. Are the girls out of the bedroom?
Dan: No. [To the girls] Girls, get out of here.
Dispatch: Yeah, have the girls get out of the bedroom, and I want you to ask them if they’re hurt at all.
Dan: [To the girls] Are you hurt at all? What’s on your arm?… It’s coming from him or you?
Girl in background: Yeah, I don’t know.
Dan: Is it you? [Pause, then to dispatch] She’s hurt, call an ambulance, she’s cut really bad.
You can see it in the transcript and hear it in his voice (there’s a video in the sources that includes it) — he’s so focused on the man that he hasn’t evacuated the girls yet. He’s concerned about the potential for rape, but he says the girls are okay. The girls are so stunned that the friend doesn’t even realize that she’s been cut yet. They’re all trying to cut through the shock.
This isn’t a critique of Dan, by the way. It’s a recognition of how difficult it is for our brains to process something of this magnitude. No blame here, just observation.
The cops arrived moments later and got the man from the bedroom. The girl underwent surgery for her wounds and would be okay physically, though God only knows what her mental state will be like.
And that gives us a chance to look at the earlier part of the night and how he came to be in the girls’ bedroom.
Following the full story
The invader was Ricardo Perez Castillo. He was 24 years old at the time. He was a Marine infantryman who had been deployed overseas twice. He was working as a recruiter in Lansing.
Earlier that night, he had a drink with his boss. He went to some kind of festival and had some more drinks there. He was definitely intoxicated when he invaded the house: The police gave him a breathalyzer test, and it was high. One source says it was a .43, but it sure sounds like they said “125” in the video — though I didn’t hear them say “point 125” — so I’m not sure what the actual number was.
I don’t care how drunk you are: If your inhibitions are reduced and your inclination is to rape a girl and kill a family, you’re probably too screwed up to be in a free society. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Walking around and the first home invasion
Castillo walked around solo in Rockford for a while — there was a “Start of Summer” celebration going on downtown, and he stayed there until about 8:30 — and then escorted a woman he didn’t know to a friends-and-family party that she was going to.
He hung out for a little while, talking to the family, and then — quoting his words to investigators during interrogation now — “for some reason, in my head, like, it just feels like, it was the apocalypse?” But he left that party, apparently without noticing any effects of living in the apocalypse, and started walking again.
In the interrogation, the next thing he mentions is walking toward the woods. But News 8 found another homeowner who met him first.
A couple who lived about a half-mile from downtown were home entertaining another couple on their deck. Just after 2 AM, the male homeowner walked into the house and saw what he thought was his friend at the sink — and then did a double-take, because it was another man instead. It was Castillo, of course, though the homeowner didn’t know him.
He asked Castillo what he was doing there. No answer.
“I proceeded to ask him to leave,” he told News 8. “I walked towards him and didn’t make any physical contact with him. He left with no argument…”
But Castillo stopped when he reached the door.
“I asked him, ‘What’s going on?,’ and he said, ‘I don’t even (expletive) know what the (expletive) is going on, but just in case, just be careful. Make sure you’re armed.’ At that point I slammed the door shut and called police.”
Maybe Castillo was thinking about the apocalypse. Maybe he was thinking about what he would have done if the man hadn’t been awake. Probably even Castillo doesn’t know.
He tried to flag down some other cars, but to no avail.
Before entering the home
Back to the interrogation. Castillo remembers being lost, trying to find his car, thinking about zombies. He remembers ducking when he saw what he thought were police cars driving by.
He walked into the woods, and somewhere he found a pond. (“A puddle,” he says to investigators, before amending to “a lake.”) He remembers swimming.
That’s relevant because he knew his feet were making squishing noises, so when he went into the house, he took off his shoes, socks, and pants.
Entering the home
The first door he tried was locked. The second was open. He entered. He found the kitchen and took a knife from a drawer — so he could kill the whole family.
He walked upstairs to the second floor. The first door he found was open: the parents’ bedroom. He closed it quietly and went in search of an easier target.
That’s when he found the girls’ bedroom. That’s apparently when he got it into his head that he would kill the girl he saw and rape her dead body.
He covered her mouth and struck at her neck, fortunately striking her shoulder and arm instead.
That’s when the screaming started.
Sentencing
Castillo pleaded no contest to, among other things, assault with intent to murder.
At his sentencing, the fathers of both girls gave statements: The wounded victim’s stepfather and Dan, the homeowner. (These are YouTube videos, but I’m not allowed to embed them, so you’ll need to click through.) Castillo begged them for forgiveness, even getting down on his knees.
He was sentenced to 40 years, which would lead to a minimum time spent of 18 years.
Sources
If you’re reading this, it’s either in email or it means I didn’t finish incorporating all of the news sources yet. This will be updated later today. Meanwhile, the most important news sources to check out are below.
News sources
Solid work by WOOD 8, which covered the first home invasion — the one without significant consequences — as well as giving a detailed write-up on the second. They followed the case as it advanced through sentencing.
Interrogation videos
This has the interrogation, but unlike the others it also has Dan’s 911 call, starting at 1:48.
Here’s another interrogation video.
And another. This is the source of the 0.43 BAC claim. I don’t know if that’s right, but the video is useful for its captions of both sides of the conversations.
It’s not hard to find Dan’s last name, but they don’t need another Google search popping up for them.
What a horror. I can understand that his first thought is just to contain the invader, keep him from getting up, from doing anything else. Those poor girls. But hopefully they have great parents who will support them through the trauma with whatever they need and they'll be okay. May the Lord make is so!