Gun Held To Woman’s Head During Home Invasion

HickoryHICKORY NC – Samantha Jo Lail awoke early Monday morning around 1:30 a.m. to someone knocking loudly on the door of her mobile home.
“They were shouting a name,” she said, and she went to the door to look out the peep hole. “But it was dark, and I couldn’t see anything.”

“I went back to my bedroom and looked out the window and saw three black males walking down the driveway,” she said.

They stopped halfway and turned around.  Ms. Lail called 911.

She heard the front door being kicked in, as did her mother, who was in one of the back bedrooms.

“I got up from bed, worried about Samantha. I got halfway down the hallway when I saw someone in the living room who wasn’t supposed to be there,” said Rita Lail, Samantha’s mother.

Lail said the front door was lying on the floor, and a tall, skinny black male came toward her and put a gun to her head.

“I know you have money,” Lail said the intruder told her. She described the gun as a silver .38 handgun.  The two other intruders stood at the doorway.

The thieves took a cell phone and a Toshiba laptop computer.

The three men were able to get away before police arrived a few minutes later. The only description the victims could give was of the man with the gun. They described him as about 5 foot 10 inches tall and about 130 pounds. He wore a black toboggan, and had a red and white polo shirt wrapped around his face with only his eyes showing.

Investigators were able to lift fingerprints from the destroyed door, and told the residents the prints would be compared to prints on file.

Lail said they had lived in the mobile home for about six months. The first month they rented, someone stole the home’s heat pump. The landlord replaced the heat pump with a new one, which was also stolen, she said.

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