Posted on 08/06/2003 10:27:57 AM PDT by Deadeye Division
Home invaders pick wrong family to rob
Hilltop residents say they fought off 2 men looking for
dope, cash
Wednesday, August 06, 2003
Bruce Cadwallader
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
A Hilltop man took a knock on his head but managed to turn the tables on two armed robbers, including firing several shotgun blasts at them.
Roger Maynard said he was watching the end of Monday Night Football about 10:30 p.m. when two men burst through his front door at 235 N. Wayne Ave. and demanded money and drugs. Maynard said he had neither.
Maynard, 55, punched one robber in the face. The robber knocked Maynard to the floor with the butt of a shotgun, then held the gun on Maynard and his oldest daughter, Helen Wise, who had armed herself with a baseball bat when she heard the commotion.
The second robber took the bat and swung it around as a weapon while he looked for loot.
Two of Maynard’s four granddaughters, his wife, and his other adult daughter, Melissa Maynard, were upstairs. His son-inlaw, Jeff Wise, was downstairs with two of the girls hiding in a closet.
The granddaughters, ages 1, 2, 8 and 9, were not harmed. The 1-year-old slept through the ordeal, the family said.
Maynard’s wife, Freda, 49, ran downstairs in time to see her husband get knocked down and another man charging at her. She threw a cup of hot coffee at him and tried to run back up- stairs, but he grabbed her ankle and yanked her down.
"He just kept yelling at me, ‘Where’s the safe, where’s the safe?’ I just told him where to go look for it, but it took awhile for it to sink in that I was really telling him where it was," Mrs. Maynard said.
The Maynards said they are not drug abusers and don’t know how the men knew they had a portable safe. It contained no money, they said.
Meanwhile, Maynard’s daughter Melissa called 911.
Once the men had the safe they ran out the door to a waiting car. By then, Mr. Maynard had grabbed his own shotgun and loaded it. He fired three shots from an upstairs window, striking the getaway car.
The robbers dropped the safe. A third man waiting outside, apparently an accomplice, fled when Maynard fired the shotgun.
Columbus police officers, who had a description of the getaway vehicle, stopped a car with two suspects a couple of blocks away. Shawn Reese, 32, and Robert C. Myers, 42, both of 110 N. Princeton Ave. in Franklinton, were each charged with one count of aggravated robbery.
Police found a shotgun and Wise’s bat in the car.
The safe was returned to the family.
"I have nothing in here. I’m disabled," Mr. Maynard said. "We just moved here in February. Before now, this has been a good neighborhood. I need to put some money together and get these kids out of here now."
Mrs. Maynard said the family had looked at a house in Franklinton. "But people told me to move to the Hilltop, that it would be safer."
Anyone with information about the robbery is asked to call detectives at 614-645-4665.
bcadwallader@dispatch.com
Something tells me he's gonna catch hell for that one.Just think of all the comebacks his father in law can make when he screws up."Oh,just hide in the closet why don't ya?"
Actually, my fiancee does, and she can go to sleep right after finishing - and no, it's not decaf. But there does appear to be something odd here. If the son in law is not involved, he deserves a major whupping for hiding in the closet while both his wife and his father in law are fighting off armed intruders. And whining that he was protecting the children just isn't going to cut it...
Someone helped the robbers: it was in inside job. Why the demand for drugs, though?
Hiding in the closet with the kids? Secure them and try to get help if you aren't going into the situation. The women were definitely more self-determining than ths guy.
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