Posted on 02/17/2012 6:37:44 AM PST by Travis McGee
A Florida family endured three days of torture and fear as they were held hostage by a group of criminals demanding thousands of dollars in cash. Today the father testified against one of his abductors, telling how they terrorized the family and played Russian roulette with their five-year-old son. The scarring details came out as Victor Manuel Sanchez, the first of the four assailants, is on trial for numerous felony charges including attempted murder, home-invasion robbery, and kidnapping. Sanchez and his three partners were arrested after they had held the Morais family hostage in their Winter Garden, Florida home for three days in November 2009. The saga began when the group of three men and the female Bolivian ringleader- who remains at large and is thought to have fled the country- knocked on the Morais' home demanding that Rubens Morais, 48, give them money in order to 'save his family'. He complied and gave them $30,000 from the family safe. That did not satisfy them, and they forced Mr Morais' wife Marcela Borges, 27, to withdraw $23,600 from an ATM. Even after they had the money that they wanted, the captors were not finished with their mental torture. The captors played Russian roulette with the couple's 5-year-old son Ryan, repeatedly pulling the trigger while pressing the gun up against the young boys head. 'I was absolutely sure that after I paid them, they would kill me,' Mr Morais said
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
I was wondering the same thing.
He’s right... and it’s a LOT cheaper. Taxes are a drop in the bucket compared to what they are here.
People are so gullible. There’s a reason why Satan keeps people like this away from people like us. :-)
IF anyone does have a home safe it should be so well hidden that only you could find it and never admit you have it, don't talk about it, it does not exist and never put all or even most of your eggs in one basket. Never go to it inside your home when someone could be watching you. I'm thinking they have been doing surveillance on this home or possibly overheard a family member talking about a safe and followed them home. Kids have big mouths, a home safe or stashed money is not something they need to know about.
Maybe - That assumes the parents are normal law abiding citizens. Not sure that's been established.
We live in a semi-rural area on an acreage and have a long driveway leading up to the house. I installed a driveway alarm which alerts me to any vehicle entering the property. If it is not UPS, Fed-Ex or someone I know I am armed and ready by the time they arrive. I do not come to the door but they can hear my two large dogs barking. I am retired and am home most of the time, but set the alarm when I do leave. We have neighbors who are armed to the teeth and watch each others property.
“I need to keep a pistol by the door.”
Pfft. Frickin’ bolt a slap-grab box to the inside of the door it with a locked/loaded .45 in it. If there are no kids in the house, skip the box, and just mount a fully occupied holster on the door. On the wall, BEHIND the door (out of reach of anyone outside), mount a shotgun rack and keep it ready to rock ‘n’ roll.
POSSIBLE RESOURCES:
http://www.gunvault.com/
http://www.thegungrabber.com/
The only vaccination against regret is preparedness.
The punishment should fit the crime – execution by Russian roulette.
And leave the cartridge out for the first 200 or so tries..
"We're from the govt, and we're here to help."
Wireless cams, fake cams, and home power or solar-powered motion-activated spotlights all work well together. But in this case, they used the classic “female needs help” ruse to get the door open (and her foot in the door.) Your family REALLY needs to understand how this ruse works, to be on their guard against it. Most people instinctively trust a female at the door, and will open it. DANGER!!!! Talk through the door. And try to clear any visibility shadows back away from the door, so the gang can’t be a few feet away, but out of sight. Even fake video cameras can be a big help there.
Don’t discount hiding sharp knives in easy reach but hidden all over the place. Home invaders will typically corral the family into one area under one guard, and he can get distracted. If a knife is in reach on top of the fridge, book shelf etc, it can be a close-range game changer, and silent to boot. A pack of razor-sharp serrated “Ginsu” type knives costs next to nothing.
Looking at their home, they seem to be far wealthier than I am. Percentage wise I probably have a similar amount of cash on hand in the safe. And in the envelope hanging from a string inside the wall, and in the drawer, and some stashed in the truck, and ....
(My old man was the same way!)
Were you home, was the house empty? Usually your vehicles and home interior lights are observed as “markers” of home occupancy. I would be tempted to do a little hunting over bait with a varmint rifle, with all vehicles out of sight, no lights inside, and a .243 sighted in on the bait in the yard.
You keep posting that advice on stashing knives every once in awhile.....and I keep saying that one of these days I will do that. So thanks for the reminder!
It’s a good idea to have a decoy safe as well, with a plausible amount of cash, gold, etc. That is the only one the kids know about. It’s SOP to torture kids in front of parents and vice versa as rapid truth serum...as in this case.
Yep, driveway alarms are outstanding for advance warning.
Good ideas.
You can get one of those steak knife sets at any supermarket for about 12 bucks. Razor sharp. Nobody would leave a half-dozen loaded pistols hidden around the house, but steak knives, sure.
And when the guard, (who will be the goofball of the home invasion team), turns his back....
No one was there, no one lives there, it is a ranch and a weekend hunting camp. People have the idea that you are safe out in the country. I was just saying that being out in the country is not always safer than being in town. There are scum bags out there too.
I used to know a guy in Norman, OK who had an old pump gun here, sawed off to 19" of course, a couple of used Taurus revolvers there and there, and something else somewhere else. Maybe even a single-shot 12 gauge in the garage, standing behind a ladder in the corner gathering rust.
At the time I thought he was paranoid as hell but now I think maybe he was just familiar with the local cops and their stories and was ahead of his time - a case study in the first rule of gunfighting. "Have a gun, and it don't have to be a blingy one."
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