Parents fight off intruder

A San Carlos Park man was awakened early Saturday morning when his youngest daughter told him there was a man in her bedroom.

Dale Walgrave, 36, said his 15- and 13-year-old daughters were trapped in their bedroom for at least 15 minutes by a man who broke in and told the girls they would be leaving with him. Carl Edwin Peterson, 28, 17553 Fuscia Road, San Carlos Park, is charged with occupied burglary with assault or battery after the Lee County Sheriff’s Office arrested him at Walgrave’s home around 3 a.m.

According to the Sheriff’s Office, the girls woke up because Peterson was touching the 13-year-old girl’s arm. Blocking them in their bedroom for 15 to 20 minutes, Peterson told the girls to get dressed because they were leaving with him, Walgrave said. They managed to distract Peterson when he wanted to take their cat, and his youngest daughter made a break for it.

“She’s come out sleepwalking before, but I could tell by the urgency in her voice,” Walgrave said Saturday after returning home from the hospital. “I came down the hallway and he like appeared in my living room. So I socked him in his face, he fell, and got back up. So I socked him in the face again. I’m in my underwear fighting him.”

Walgrave estimated that he must have punched Peterson at least four times before he said Peterson made a move toward the front door. That’s when Walgrave said he rammed Peterson’s head into the drywall.

Amid the commotion, Walgrave’s 14-year-old son came out of his bedroom and Walgrave told him to call 911. Walgrave said he could smell alcohol on Peterson as Walgrave and his wife, Robin, continued to fight Peterson.

At one point, Robin Walgrave had to intervene. Dale Walgrave said Peterson may not be alive if his wife hadn’t stopped him.

“A person who does that deserves death in my opinion,” Dale Walgrave said of a man breaking into a locked home and trying to take young girls.

Dale Walgrave suffered a sprained hand and Robin Walgrave suffered torn ligaments in her foot from scuffling with Peterson.

Peterson’s truck was parked across the street from their house, in the ditch.

“There was no sexual touching,” said Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Ileana LiMarzi Foell. “What he was planning after that we don’t know.”

Peterson is not listed as a sex offender. He lives about one mile from the teens’ home. He was in the Lee County jail on Saturday night.

Jail records show Peterson was booked into and released from the jail in March on a felony traffic violation. He was charged with driving with a suspended license, at least his third such offense, according to booking records.

Criminal Justice Information System records for Southwest Florida show that Peterson was arrested in 2003 and 2004 for drunken driving. Lee County Circuit Clerk records show that on June 21 some traffic violations were dismissed.

Peterson’s mother, Barbara Lau, said she didn’t know of her son’s arrest until being contacted by the Daily News. Lau, of San Carlos Park, said her son has a drinking problem. She said after his third DUI arrest, she told him not to call her again to bail him out of jail.