It’s one thing to have your home unexpectedly destroyed by a hurricane or an earthquake, but quite another to have it destroyed by your own husband, with whom you’re not even on bad terms.
But that’s exactly what happened to Diane Andryshak when she stepped out for a bit on Monday. Her husband James Rhein, 48, waited until she was gone, rented a bulldozer, and demolished it.
Andryshak had bought the 840-square-foot, three bedroom house ten years ago and Rhein had apparently decided it was in need of too many repairs and should just be done away with.
"So I took it down, that's it," Rhein said of his plan. He claims he tried to call his wife of nine years before he started but that she didn’t answer the phone. When she returned, the only thing left were the front steps, noted the Times-Herald Record.
"She was very upset. She was in the middle of the road screaming, 'her house, what happened to her house?’” the couple’s neighbor Darryl Horn told WNBC.
"I don't know what happened. I don't know anything,” Andryshak told WABC. “I know that when I got here he was already down at the police station. We were not fighting, we were not arguing."
Though the couple was not living in the house at the time, Andryshak had many of her belongings still inside. The water, gas & electricity were still connected and only shut off with an emergency call to the property. Rhein had notified no one of his plan and had decided not to wait for permit offices to reopen after the MLK Jr. Day holiday.
Those procedural errors got Rhein arrested during the demolition. He was charged with second degree criminal mischief and released on $300 bail.
“I’m still in shock” Andryshak said on Tuesday, "I don't have any answers for you, I don't have any answers for you whatsoever."
Rhein seemed to see it differently, telling reporters his wife was “over it.”
"We're good,” he insisted. “I'm a good husband, what can I tell you?"
