DFW: WOW very daring home invasion!

[Beiruty]

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Woman, nephew kidnapped and robbed in Far North Dallas

Family released after withdrawing money from ATMs

05:41 PM CDT on Thursday, June 25, 2009

By AVI SELK /The Dallas Morning News
aselk@dallasnews.com

A woman and her 8-year-old nephew were robbed and briefly kidnapped after a home invasion in Far North Dallas Wednesday morning. The family was released only after withdrawing hundreds of dollars from two ATMs for one of the suspects.

Two men burst into accountant Stacie Roberton's house on Cherry Tree Drive some time between 8:30 a.m and 9 a.m., according to Robertson and a Dallas Police report. The noise woke up Robertson's 8-year-old nephew while she and her mother slept in their bedrooms.

"My nephew woke me up and told me someone was robbing the house," said Robertson, 39. "It took me a minute to get acclimated."

When Robertson entered her living room, she said she encountered a man about five-foot-six inches tall, with his face wrapped in a white shirt and a stocking cap. He was armed with a hunting knife and a hammer, she said.

The man punched Robertson in the head, knocking her unconscious, she said.

When she came to a few minutes later, she was hog-tied with an extension cord and some blood-pressure cuffs, which belonged to her mother, a nurse who slept through the entire incident in another room.

Her attacker and his accomplice, who Robertson described as about six-and-a-half feet tall, were hauling her jewelry and flatscreen TV to a brown pickup parked outside.

Robertson said her nephew saw a woman sitting in the truck.

After their belongings had been taken, Robertson said the shorter of the two men came back inside and asked if she had any cash. She didn't.

"He said, 'Wrong answer,'" she recalled.

The man untied Robertson and let her put on sweatpants under her nightgown, then forced her and her nephew into her mother's Honda Civic and told her to drive to a nearby ATM, she said.

Robertson said she drove to two nearby ATMs as the man held a knife to her throat and threatened to mutilate her nephew. She said she withdrew $400 from each machine with her and her mother's debit card and handed it to her kidnapper.

Then the man told Robertson to stop the car in a parking lot in the 9700 block of Forest Lane, about a mile south of the house, and told her and her nephew to bend down and count to 100. He fled the car with the cash and a stereo he had ripped out of the vehicle.

Police were called to the scene after the woman's mother, Dorothy Robertson, 61, woke up in the house to discover the back door kicked in, the living room ransacked, and her family missing.

Robertson and her nephew arrived back home shortly before 10 a.m. to find about a dozen police officers in her house with her mother.

Robertson said she believes at least one of the suspects knew her. She said she received two hang-up calls from a blocked number the night before, and her kidnapper seemed to know her neighborhood extremely well.

Cpl. Janice Crowther a spokeswoman for the Dallas Police Department, said police had not yet identified any of the suspects.

[casingpoint]

Two men burst into accountant Stacie Roberton's house on Cherry Tree Drive some time between 8:30 a.m and 9 a.m.

Like my ole' Grandma used to day, the early bird gets the worm. All I can say is you can shoot people like that with impunity, assuming you get the chance. That's a big if at that hour of the morning. Few people are in condition red then.

[Drewthetexan]

I'd have to agree, I'm hardly "on alert" early in the morning. I guess I figure all the bad guys are at home, asleep still...

[TheBlake]

I dunno, if I get woken up by anything but my alarm clock first instinct is look at the nightstand at my pistol...