Robbers Invade Home, Terrorize 5 in Yorba Linda

YORBA LINDA —  A band of masked Asian teen-agers stormed into a home here, bound members of a family of five with duct tape and pistol-whipped the mother before fleeing with jewelry, police said Saturday.

Brea officers, who police neighboring Yorba Linda, said the victims of the attack just before midnight Friday are Chinese but that the intrusion resembles home invasions that have plagued the county’s Vietnamese community in recent months.

The mother, 47, was treated at a local hospital for several facial cuts, a black eye and a broken hand, then released. She asked not to be identified. No other injuries were reported.

The woman said Saturday that the robbers beat her until she could no longer speak. Her 12-year-old daughter finally screamed out where the invaders could find the family’s jewelry.

The woman was struck with a pistol after resisting the intruders’ demands. She said she refused to cooperate because she originally thought that there was just one intruder, who “was short like me.”

“The way they came into my house, I was angry!” the woman said, still furious at noon Saturday. “But I was also scared, scared that they would hurt my children.”

Brea police Lt. Bill Lentini said investigators are exploring whether the suspects--four or five Asian youths in their late teens or early 20s--may be the same suspects that the Orange County Sheriff’s Department is seeking in last weekend’s drive-by shooting at Mile Square Park.

“We are looking at that,” said Lentini, who added that just one previous home invasion has been reported in the community, “and that was a year ago.”

Police and the injured woman said the ordeal started at 11:56 p.m. Friday in the 17000 block of Monette Circle. At home were the 47-year-old woman, her 12-year-old daughter, her 37-year-old sister, a 12-year-old niece and a 13-year-old nephew. The phone rang twice, and both times the caller hung up.

“That’s how they do it,” the homeowner said. “This happened to my brother two months ago in Cypress. Same exact thing. They call first to see if anyone’s home.”

The woman’s teen-age son was staying the night with a friend. When someone knocked on the front door, the 12-year-old daughter assumed that her brother was returning home for something he had forgotten.

She opened the door, and the first of four or five intruders burst through, ordering the girl to look away.

“I saw her (the daughter) bow her head,” said the mother, who had been reading at the kitchen table. “I thought they were making her pray.”

The victims were told, “ ‘Don’t look at me or I’ll kill you!’ ” Lentini said.

“They kept asking me, ‘Where is your husband? Where is your husband?’ ” the mother said. “I’m separated, I live with my sister and her kids, so I just kept saying, ‘He’s upstairs.’ ”

Two of the intruders concentrated on the mother and daughter, while two or three more ran upstairs to the master bedroom, where they tied up the sister and her daughter. The sister’s son hid in the bedroom closet undetected.

TVs and radios were turned on to muffle the intruders’ shouts for cash and jewelry, the victims said. Duct tape covered the victims’ eyes and mouths and placed around their limbs. The assailants ransacked the home before finding jewelry of unknown value and fleeing. No getaway car was seen or heard, police said.

“It’s a very nice residential neighborhood,” Lentini said, “a nice home, which is consistent with home invasions. But it isn’t like they picked a rich family; one of these women is a secretary.”

“We have always thought this wouldn’t happen in our neighborhood,” the injured woman said. “I’m not Vietnamese, I’m Chinese, but a lot of my friends have been robbed and invaded this way.

“So if talking about this can remind someone it’s not so safe after all and be careful, that’s good. We lived here 21 years and never had anything happen.”