By Ellen Thompson
The Record
Related: Protecting yourself and your family from retaliation: Part 1
STOCKTON, Calif. The victim said five masked men burst into his house and terrorized his two young daughters before hitting him over the head with a gun.
Sheriff’s Office spokesman Les Garcia said the victim was armed with a gun, but neither the man nor his attackers fired their weapons during the attack.
While home-invasion crimes are on the rise in Stockton and San Joaquin County -- with many involving assaults on residents -- the attack on Shippee Lane differed. Nothing was taken, and the attack did not appear random.
Tuesday’s attack did not change how Larry Link feels about his normally quiet neighborhood.
Link said the only time he sees sheriff’s units in the area is during routine patrols. He said he was surprised to see a few patrol cars on the block when he arrived home Tuesday, but he wasn’t even sure what it meant.
When his wife asked him to check it out, he thought better of it, he said.
“If it was a good thing, I didn’t want to intrude, and if was a bad thing, I didn’t want to be there,” he said.
Other residents in the area called 911 for help after the victim’s two daughters came running out of the house. When the attackers left, the girls’ father emerged with blood flowing from a wound on his head. Garcia said he did not know if the victim had been taken to a hospital and he did not his condition.
Full descriptions of the attackers were not available Tuesday. Garcia said witnesses saw the men leaving in an older, blue, four-door Honda Civic with oxidized paint.
Police advise residents to install security doors and peepholes, keep a porch light on at night and not to answer the door to strangers to help avoid being the victim of a home-invasion attack.
Copyright 2007 The Record