CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Three dangerous men are on the run after a mother said they broke into her Myers Park home before dawn and kidnapped her at gunpoint.
The crime happened while her 12-year-old slept in the next room.
Police said the woman walked downstairs between 5 a.m. and 6 a.m. and found herself face-to-face with three men wearing bandanas who had broken in.
“As soon as I rounded the corner they grabbed my neck and put the gun to my neck and showed me they had a knife,” the victim told Channel 9 reporter Mark Becker.
The men told the woman to be quiet and follow orders, police said.
“They said that I had to come upstairs with them, and they wanted all the jewelry and valuables,” she said. “I gave them what I had. I didn't tell them that there was a kid in the room. He was asleep in his room.”
Somehow her 12-year-old son didn't wake up. They took her wedding set and $20,000 worth of jewelry, but it wasn't enough.
The men forced the woman at gunpoint to go to an ATM on Montford Drive and withdraw cash.
“They put me in the car and they asked me -- took me with them to the bank and kept trying to get me to withdraw $800, $400, $200,” the victim said.
When the ATM wouldn't give her what they wanted, she said they got angry and she was worried what they would do next. One of the suspects told her she needed someone to protect her.
“I thought I was going to get raped when he said that,” she said.
Instead, they took her back to her home and told her to go into a closet and stay there until they left.
It all happened on a street where neighbors watch out for each other. One person even gave police surveillance video from his home that may show the suspects or their car.
Many in the neighborhood are on edge after the crime.
“It scares me because my daughters were both still asleep, and my wife and I went to the gym,” neighbor Todd Fishman said.
Police have given Channel 9 a general description of the assailants’ car, which is a 1990s green or turquoise Chevy, perhaps a Caprice. They did not have a tag number, but they may release surveillance video if it will help find the car.
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