Friday, June 04, 1999
Trio invade Middletown home
One suspect arrested after police arrive
BY JANICE MORSE
The Cincinnati Enquirer
MIDDLETOWN — In a rare “home invasion” robbery, three masked thugs went inside a west-side residence, where they severely beat a man and terrorized a pregnant woman and her 4-year-old daughter early Thursday, police said.
Police caught one suspect, identified as Charles Howard, 25, and were seeking two others, Middletown Police Maj. Mike Bruck said Thursday afternoon.
Mr. Howard was expected to appear today in municipal court on charges of aggravated robbery, two counts of kidnapping and a count of felonious assault.
The incident was reported around 2:15 a.m., when a resident of the 1200 block of Lind Street escaped from his attackers and ran to a neighbor's house to call police, Maj. Bruck said.
The resident, George Crowell, 24, was treated at Middletown Regional Hospital and released.
After Mr. Crowell escaped, an unidentified woman in the house and her daughter “were locked in the basement while the house was ransacked,” a news release said.
“When the culprit was unable to find the money, he took the adult female from the basement and threatened her at gunpoint to tell where the money was hidden,” the statement said. “This is when po lice arrived and he held her hostage until she was able to escape out the front door.”
When police arrived at the home, they heard a female weeping while a male voice threatened, “Shut up and lay down or I will kill you,” a police report said.
Police knocked at the door, but the people inside grew silent and would not answer. Soon thereafter, the female left the house holding a handgun.
Apparently, one of the intruders “set the gun down, and she got it away from him,” Maj. Bruck said. This was the man later taken into custody.
Maj. Bruck said police didn't know why the trio targeted this particular residence, but he said Mr. Howard had formerly lived on the same street.
Because the other two suspects remained masked throughout the attack, police have no good physical description of them, Maj. Bruck said. They fled before police arrived.
Reports did not say whether the two at-large suspects took anything from the house when they fled.
Maj. Bruck said Middletown sees only one or two home invasion robberies per year.
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