Story by Jamie Nash / Video by Scott Engle
HARRIS COUNTY — A Huffman woman and her 10-year-old son were horrified Wednesday morning as they became victims of a home invasion and their frustrating experience with the 911 system only added to their angst.
The family lives in the Commons off Huffman Cleveland Road and FM 2100, in what they consider a sort of suburban paradise, where deer and other animals roam free and the mom says “It’s like going to the lake every day.” She never imagined the first time she shot at a living thing it would be a human, much less in her own home, but it happened.
The woman’s 17-year-old son had already left for school and she was performing her usual morning tasks when
She heard breaking glass in the garage. Unsure what was happening, she went to check on her 10-year-old and found him on the couch watching cartoons. She then knew something was terribly wrong. The woman said she grabbed her son and hid him in the closet, telling him, “No matter what you hear, do not leave this closet until a police officer gets you.”
She armed herself with a gun that had been her fathers, passed down to her son as a Christmas present, and went to check things out. She saw a man walking around in her living room as if he belonged there, and he appeared to be trying to figure out how to get her television off the wall above the fireplace. About that time, a second man appeared and alerted the first intruder of her presence. He yelled and told his accomplice she had a gun. The man in the living room panicked, she said, and started to run.
“I kind of panicked too, and just shot at him,” she said. “I think I missed him.” She did hit the candle on the wall which was four feet from the suspect.
“I was so angry – I became a mama bear,” she said. “My baby was in the closet and nobody was going to hurt him.”
“I found an anger I did not have.”
She has no memory of saying anything, but her son heard her yell at them to get out of the house.
The men disappeared and she ran back to her son in the closet, who said the scariest moment was when he heard the gunshot but was unable to see who fired it.
“It was very horrifying, and when she shot the gun it was very scary because I didn’t know if she had shot the gun or if the robbers had shot the gun so I got really scared – really scared,” he said.
The 10-year-old tried over and over to call for help, but mother and son say the 911 system was an ordeal in and of itself.
“They kept hanging up on me and like saying they’re trying to connect, and then I just kept on calling them and they always couldn’t connect to me,” the boy said. “It was bad.”
At one point, the 10-year-old told a call-taker, “My mom just shot a gun at somebody and we don’t know if they’re alive or if they’re laying on our floor, I don’t know – we were being robbed and we need help.”
“I just kept saying that and they always disconnected me,” he said.
The mother explained that each time they called, they connected with a 911 operator in Houston, who then said their call would be transferred to their local precinct, but the transfers were met with busy signals, resulting in disconnecting and redialing, only to have the same thing happen again.
“It was frustrating,” she said. “(The call taker) kept saying is this a new neighborhood, is this a developed neighborhood, what are the cross streets…”
The subdivision is developed, has been there for years and the mom says it is the largest in the area and everyone should know where it is.
They waited 25 minutes, with a jammed gun, not knowing if the robbers were still on the premises, or if the police were even on their way.
Finally, help arrived. The woman heard members of the Harris County Sheriff’s Office and Precinct 3 Constables Office yelling from outside. They yelled to the mother and son for 10 minutes as the call taker told them to remain in the house until police came inside. The mother finally got tired of waiting and went where officers could see her.
The deputies entered the home and checked it, finding the intruders were long gone. They had used a crowbar and other tools to make entry. Some of the items they planned to take were in a pile in the garage. They heard the family’s 200 pound Mastiff, latched inside a bathroom, but were unable to find their small poodle type dog at first. Then they heard the dog whining from laundry area, where he’d been stuffed in a washing machine and the lid closed.
The woman’s car was parked outside, but she believes the intruders thought nobody was home, since they were walking around like they were at home.
Aside from the gun she fired Wednesday morning, there are no firearms in the house, the woman said. But the experience has changed her stance on gun ownership.
“We don’t own guns,” she said. “That’s about to change.”
The ordeal has also made her determined to do something to make sure the next time someone in her neighborhood has an emergency, 911 will dispatch officers immediately.
While the traumatic day has given the mother a laundry list of things to do, her son was amazingly philosophical about it, saying he does not feel any differently about his home. He says it has a lot of room to play and he likes the deer running around outside and the fort he built in back of the house.
“I’m just going to keep living like I normally did,” he said. “I’m just going to move on.”
THIS VIDEO OF THE MOTHER AND SON IS UNCUT-
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