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Children lock themselves in bathroom during invasion
By LOUISA OWEN SONSTROEM
Chronicle Staff Writer
WINDHAM — Terrified, two children reportedly huddled in a locked bathroom during a harrowing home invasion on Back Road Monday afternoon.
Although they survived physically unhurt, the fear caused by the burglars remains.
Meanwhile, state police from Troop K in Colchester are investigating the case as a forced- entry residential burglary and no arrests had been made as of mid-morning today.
Troy Quick and Wendy Merchant live in a house on Back Road with Quick’s 12-year-old son and 14-yearold daughter.
The two children were home alone Monday around 4:30 p.m., Merchant said this morning, when the boy noticed a strange car pulling into the driveway and neither child was expecting anyone.
The children reportedly saw two Hispanic-looking men walking up to the door, with another sitting in the car in the driveway.
“They started knocking, then they started banging, banging very hard,” Merchant said. “( The girl) is very smart. She had her brother come in the bathroom with her.”
The children locked the bathroom’s two doors, which connected to the hallway and a bedroom. They also locked the bedroom door.
“All of a sudden they heard the door crash,” Merchant said.
The son used a cell phone to call Quick while the daughter used her phone to call 911.
The children heard their 125-pound black lab bark violently at the intruders, after which there was a yelp and then silence, Merchant said.
According to Merchant, the dog was apparently kicked down into the basement, and is “not himself ” today.
The burglars seemed to have rummaged through jewelry and other valuables, also unplugging and beginning to move several televisions.
Meanwhile, a family friend had been driving by the house, Merchant said, and — noticing the strange car and odd men — called Quick to ask whether he should check in.
Merchant said Quick told the friend, “‘Can you go just make a presence over there?’ So thank God that he did.”
While the friend was arriving, the men had smashed in the daughter’s bedroom door and were only one door away from finding them, she said.
“The kids were more than hysterical,” Merchant said.
The children could reportedly hear the men speaking in a foreign language with each other.
As the family friend arrived, the men allegedly ran through the basement doors, and two left in the car while the third fled across the street into a neighbor’s yard and out of sight.
“We don’t know what they were going to do to these kids,” Merchant said.
The family friend reportedly wrote down the license plate of the car, described as a green Toyota, as 799ZOM.
According to Merchant, state police failed to arrive until roughly an hour and a half after the daughter first called, perhaps due to confusion over whether the call was legitimate or a prank call.
“ Even if something like that was a joke, aren’t they supposed to investigate right away, regardless? This was no joke,” she said. “These are our kids, for God’s sake.”
When the troopers arrived, they took statements from each of the children and were reportedly “ very, very, very pleased with how they handled the situation,” Merchant said.
Today, after a sleepless night, the family was working with a contractor to have the busted front door repaired.
“ I’m trying to get my door secure,” Quick said.
Meanwhile, Merchant said, the children were “very traumatized. They’re trying to play it cool because they don’t want us to think that they’re scared. We’re just as scared as they are.”
According to a criminal information summary from the state police, the case was under investigation but no arrest had been made.
No further information could be provided by state police at this stage of the investigation.
Anyone with information pertaining to the burglary case is asked to call state Trooper Carly Topulos at (860) 465-5455, ext. 4094.
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Posted 665 weeks ago
