Unexpected guest: Arkansas family finds stranger living in basement of their home

SEARCY, Ark. — An Arkansas family encountered an unexpected guest last week when they discovered a man living in their basement.

According to White County Sheriff’s Office online booking records, Preston Scott Landis, 41, was arrested on April 29. He was charged with theft of property and residential burglary, online records show.

According to authorities, Landis had formed a makeshift bed inside a storage closet in the basement of the home of Dutch and Sharon Hoggatt. He was arrested without incident after Sharon Hoggatt discovered him in the home.

But before finding Landis, the Hoggatts had been noticing odd things around their residence in Searcy.

“I came in looking for my work shoes. I always leave them by the back door. My work shoes were gone,” Dutch Hoggatt, a professor of communications at nearby Harding University, told KTHV. “I asked my wife if she had thrown them away, and she had not. Over time, we noticed that chairs had been moved around in the house.

“We noticed that some of our food was missing.”

The Hoggatts told their daughter, Cherisse Gregory, about what they were observing.

“I think they thought they were both going crazy,” Gregory told KTHV. “And I’m like, ‘That doesn’t happen at the same time suddenly.’”

Hoggott was at church on April 29, but Gregory and her husband, Mark, decided to investigate with Sharon Hoggatt.

Sharon Hoggatt entered a storage area underneath the basement stairs and discovered a man lurking in the shadows.

“She went further into the closet, and that’s when I saw her eyes get really big,” Mark Gregory told KTHV. “She starts to back out, and she says, ‘There’s someone in there. I see their leg, or their jeans, or something.”

Mark Gregory yelled at Landis to come out, which he reluctantly did after Gregory hit a door frame with a baseball bat to flush him out of his hiding place.

Landis had taken shelter at the residence on April 28 and stayed until he was discovered underneath the stairs inside the basement storage closet, KTHV reported.

The Hoggatts and Gregorys were sympathetic toward Landis’ situation.

“We’re not angry at this man,” Hoggatt told the television station. “I feel sorry for the man. I’m glad we figured out there was somebody living in the house, because this could have gone on for much longer than it did.”

“I don’t think he was trying to be a bad guy,” Mark Gregory told KTHV. “There was plenty of opportunities where he could have taken things. It seemed like he was just trying to get out of the elements, trying to survive.”

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