A "lady" from Atlanta (Marlene Wilson) is looking to set up a home invasion. She is not going to do it herself: she is going to manage and supervise. She knows a drug dealer in Fayetteville, NC (Not named here) who will help her finds targets. She knows some people who do this kind of thing in Miami (Terence McCoy, his lovely wife, and their friend Bernard Royal). She gets all of the related people together in Fayetteville. They decide to add one more person and hook up with some "local talent"(Latimore).
They drive around the Fayetteville, NC area, with the [unnamed] drug dealer friend, to pick a target. On further review they decide on Ms. Charlotte Kurtz, girlfriend/wife of drug dealer Glenn Arthur, that lives toward the outskirts of a community next to Fayetteville. As a side note, Glenn Arthur is actually working at an auto-repair shop and the information that he is a drug dealer is a bit dated. It is very possible at the time of this story that he had left the drug business.
Their plan is to catch the Ms. Kurtz leaving (or latter coming to) their house with their little boy. They are planning to drag them back into the house tie them up and poor gasoline on them if they won't talk. Not stated specifically, but it is possibly they will drive them around to some ATM machines while someone holds the kid.
They go to a big box hardware store and steal what they need. It is easy because people make a habit of leaving their keys in their cars.
They go to Ms. Kurtz house and wait for the victim to come out on Friday morning. One (Bernard Royal) is in the car, two others are in nearby woods. The road is not a through street, neighbors see them and call 9-1-1. The police show up and the driver (Bernard Royal) leads them on a merry chase in the previously stolen vehicle. Eventually he ditches the car and gets back to the other two. They all hide their guns. But the police are still running after the original driver and now all three are running around. Eventually they all get away.
After a bit of trouble all getting back together, the next day they try again. They realize that you cannot hang out in front of people houses with a car. So the car stays around the corner at a gas station with the driver. The two heavies are hiding behind the house. An (ex-Special Forces) neighbor sees them behind the house and confronts them: gun in hand. In a confusion of gunfire the bad guys run away. The police figure out what the nearby get away car is all about and give chase. Get away car driver (Bernard Royal) is caught and rats everyone out.
O.k. maybe that was not as simple as I would have liked, but I actually did leave out some of the extraneous events.
Conclusions/Lessons:
- Alert neighbors are your best defense. These neighbors get the meddle of honor for both observance and willingness to intervene. Fayetteville is a relatively high crime area. On the plus side being near a military base it increases the chance that one of your neighbors will be some sort of ex-special forces type. Given the neighborhood, I suspect he was an ex-NCO type.
- There is a fine line between distance in the country helping, and hurting. Here the, relatively small, homes had some distance between them, and some very large back yard areas, but neighbors could see their house and street.
- Felons target other criminals. This is true at almost all levels. Felons generally don't report crimes to the police. They also carry a lot of cash, jewelry, and guns.
- Weapons by themselves are of limited deterrence in a home invasion. Weapons were on the list of valuables that they were looking for.
- Getting in and out of a car is an extremely vulnerable moment. It is very predictable choke point. There plan was to block the driveway with the car, and have the two on foot grab the victim.
- Let your neighbors know how to get hold of you. Doesn't note it in the story, but the neighbors did try and call the Ms. Kurtz to see if she knew who all these people were.
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