LYNN, Mass. — Evan Luongo was listening to a meditation app in his bedroom when suddenly, things took a chaotic turn with a home invasion.
Two armed teenagers broke into Luongo's home in Lynn. But what they didn't realize is that Luongo, a 37-year-old who keeps a machete under his bed, was fully prepared to defend himself.
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"But like, dude, if we're doing this, we're doing this and you're in my house, so this is going to get ugly," Luongo told Boston 25 News, recounting the home invasion.
He called it a "moment of conflict."
"If I go in there, I have to be ready to die, but I may have to be ready to kill someone," he said.
Luongo said he heard broken glass and "tried to ignore it, saying it was ocean sounds because I was falling asleep."
But he soon realized that someone had made their way into his home through a back slider.
He jumped out of bed to investigate, and instinctively grabbed the machete he keeps under his bed.
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"It happened in, like, three seconds but it felt like forever," he said. "I fear if I didn't have the machete, the equation would've been very different."
Wielding that weapon, Luongo went through his house, toward his office, and saw the door closed with the lights on.
"I knew I was embarking into chaos. I knew I didn't know what was on the other side of the door," he said.
He kicked open the door.
"I started screaming drop your (expletive) weapons," Luongo said.
He faced off with a 16-year-old, armed with a BB gun, and 19-year-old Adelson Fedna, a Malden High junior who police say was armed with a kitchen knife.
He says the cowering duo obeyed his commands and kept their hands above their heads until police arrived to arrest them.
"I hold no ill will. People do dumb things. I don't want to see them burn," Luongo said. "But in the same sense, don't come back. Please don't come back."
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