It started with a commotion at the front door.
It was 3 a.m. when a Falmouth resident got out of bed and went to see what was going on outside his house on Gray Road. He switched on a light, and what he saw frightened and confused him: Three men in ski masks stood on his porch, and one had a pry bar.
“FBI!” one of them said. “Open the door.”
Still half asleep and confused, he complied.
It was the start of a frightening home invasion, assault and robbery. The ordeal on Nov. 28 lasted for hours and left the resident bloodied, injured and scared.
Police said they are investigating the incident and believe that there is no ongoing danger to the public.
“It was determined this incident was an isolated and targeted event,” Falmouth Police Lt. Jeffrey Pardue said. “Further investigation has corroborated that initial determination, and at no time did the Falmouth Police Department believe there was an additional public safety risk to the community.”
But the victim said he is afraid his assailants will return, and that he fears for his safety and the safety of his family.
In an interview at his home, the 55-year-old man requested anonymity because police have not arrested his attackers.
“This was a nightmare, the worst I’ve had in my life,” he said.
He believes he was targeted because he had recently sold two vehicles, and someone knew he was in possession of nearly $10,000 in cash. One of the sales, a pickup truck sold to a friend, netted about $8,000. The other, of an older vehicle in worse shape, brought in about $1,000.
When he went to the door, he said, he was not thinking clearly. He had just woken up and the men were saying they were from the FBI. When he opened the door, they forced their way inside the home and began beating him. One was armed with a baton, and another had a taser, he said. He never saw their faces.
“They attacked me immediately,” he said.
He said he tried to fight back but was overpowered, and they dragged him to a lower level of the home. Someone tasered him multiple times, and someone else swung the baton, cracking open his head and concussing him. At some point, one of the assailants brandished what looked like a gun, which the man said he managed to wrestle away, only to discover it was fake.
But the men then tied him up and dragged him to his kitchen. One man beat him with a rolling pin, and they demanded money.
He said he told them where to find the cash, but they insisted on turning his house inside out looking for more, and emptied every cabinet in his kitchen, smashing a couple of drawers.
The man, who works as a cab driver, said he had nothing more to give them. He said he had been robbed before on the job, but never assaulted like this in his own home.
“They said, ‘You don’t know who we are. We will (expletive) you over.’”
PHYSICAL AND EMOTIONAL WOUNDS
Evidence of the assault still lingers: a red-brown smear of blood on the white enamel stove, and a wide stain of blood on an area rug, piled high with debris from the ransacking, where he lay bound and bleeding that morning.
It was daylight by the time the men left. He struggled to free his legs and then ran out of the house, his hands still bound and his body bloody.
Now he’s afraid inside his own house, and has positioned weapons around the residence, fearful that he will need the defend himself.
Next to his front door, he has placed a pickax; in his hallway, a softball bat. Three knives are in strategic positions in the kitchen.
The experience terrified him, he said, and he now struggles to sleep at night.
On Monday, his left eye was still swollen and full of blood.
Doctors had just removed 13 staples that closed a wound in his scalp, and he was walking with a limp.
He said he wants to board up his home and buy a gun to protect himself – and is considering moving away entirely.
“They said they’ll ruin my life,” he said. “That bothers me. I want to know, who gave my address to these people?”
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