BETHESDA, Md. – A Maryland woman and her mother are speaking out after they experienced a harrowing and violent home invasion over the weekend. It happened at their home in East Bethesda Sunday night.
Police say the suspect is a 40-year-old woman, reportedly from Alabama, who was apparently looking for an ex-husband or ex-boyfriend at the wrong house.
“I thought I was in a dream or a nightmare,” mom Linda told FOX 5.
Linda and her daughter Kristen spoke from their Bethesda home the morning after they were victims of a brutal attack inside their house that started when the doorbell rang.
“So I open the door and she said ‘does Jean Paul live here?’ And I said, ‘no I don’t know any Jean Paul,’ and I closed it and I locked it,” Kristen said.
Seconds later, she says she could see the door handle shaking.
“She was trying to get in and that’s when I think I called 911 but then it occurred to me the back door was unlocked and that’s when I ran to the back,” Kristen told FOX 5.
But the woman who was at her front door ran to the back too.
“And I was dialing 911 and then I came here and I was like trying to lock it and she just blew through the door. Just blew through the doors and grabbed me and started just hitting me,” said Kristen.
Her mother Linda was upstairs at the time.
“I just ran down here and she was beating Kristen there and when she saw me she grabbed me and pulled me down,” Linda said.
“She grabbed my hair and pulled me in and then grabbed my mom‘s hair and I saw her just beating my mother,” Kristen said. “There was a point where my mom kind of got loose and ran out and I grabbed her legs to stop her but all the while I was laying there.”
Linda and eventually Kristen were able to get outside and yelled at a neighbor to also call 911. Montgomery County Police dispatchers got the emergency calls just after 8 p.m.
“We have an open line with a female screaming in the background. Someone saying get away from me and we have another call from a female saying that a female was beating another,” you can hear the dispatcher saying in that 911 call.
“You can’t even comprehend somebody be so violent,” Kristen said. “It was so bizarre and frightening.”
Kristen suffered a ruptured ear drum and has bruises on the side of her face.
“I’ve never been hit before,” she said. “I’ve never been in a fight at all. Like I have never been punched.”
Linda has bruises and rug burns from being dragged across the rug and their lawn outside. Neighbors held the woman until the police came.
“I just want some answers like who is this woman and is she going to come back? If she’s mentally ill is she going to get locked up? I want to know where she is so I can feel safe again,” Kristen said.
“That’s my feeling too,” her mom added.
Linda told FOX 5 she has lived in her house for 50 years and that she’s never had anything like this happen before.
“We were in the wrong place at the wrong time, in our house,” she said.
The suspect is a woman named Latoya Owens. She’s been charged with burglary and assault.
She was supposed to have a bond hearing in Rockville Monday afternoon but we’re told she was too violent for that to happen, so the judge ordered a mental health evaluation and for Owens to be held without bond.
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