2 homes invaded in 1 day
FORT WALTON BEACH — Two home invasions within 30 minutes kept police busy Friday evening searching for suspects.
“We don’t know much,” Fort Walton Beach police Cpl. Stephanie Volkenand said while standing at the front door of a house on Northeast Gardner Drive.
Here’s what police do know:
Three masked men ransacked a bedroom in the home after they burst in through the back door at about 3:45 p.m. and demanded money. They left through the same door.
Police say they were armed, but wouldn’t confirm the types of weapons. Volkenand said the suspects were black men.
At about 3:15 p.m., a man broke into a home on Northwest Wright Parkway through a back window and took about $65 in change. Witnesses there said he had “a long knife,” according to police Sgt. Ed Rossi, who described the suspect as a skinny black man, about 6 feet tall and wearing a yellow pullover, jeans and a belt.
No one was hurt in either incident.
By 5 p.m., police were still circling the neighborhood around the Gardner Drive home as investigators questioned two people who lived there.
The residents were “totally clueless,” Volkenand said as heavy rain poured down.
She said the bedroom belonged to a son of the two residents who were home. Rossi said the son was an adult.
The parents told investigators at the scene that the son was gone. It’s not clear where he went, but Volkenand said police believe the three men may have been looking for him.
The suspects took a cell phone with the son’s number in it. The parents don’t know how to contact him.
It was not immediately known if anything else was stolen.
Nearby, an admittedly “nervous” young woman with a 4-year-old boy said she’s seen drug activity in the neighborhood in the past. She asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation.
Police don’t believe the two incidents are connected.
Rossi said at about 10 p.m. that both investigations were continuing.