Atlanta

Nanny cam catches thief with rifle breaking into home

ATLANTA — Police say a thief armed with an assault rifle was caught on a nanny cam armed breaking into a northwest Atlanta house.

Channel 2’s Nefertiti Jaquez learned the house wasn’t the only home the thief has targeted. In another case, the homeowner was there when he sneaked in.

“He told me to lie down on the bed and put my face in the pillow and I thought then he was going to rape me and shoot me in the back of the head,” Barbara Lyles-Anderson told Jaquez.

The mother said she was only wearing her nightgown when the man armed with an assault rifle entered her home through an unlocked kitchen door just before lunchtime Friday and pointed the gun at her head.

“I stand over and walk over to him and he points the gun,” Lyles-Anderson said. “The red laser, he pointed at my forehead.”

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Lyles-Anderson said the suspect broke into another home in northwest Atlanta, demanded jewelry and cash.

“I pointed to a jewelry box and he went over there and flipped it up, the whole time he’s with the gun,” Lyles-Anderson said.

She told Jaquez that he terrorized her in her own home before taking off with thousands of dollars’ worth of belongings.

A short time later, police say the same thief hit up another home about 4 miles away.

This time, however, it was caught on the family’s nanny cam.

The owners who didn’t want to be identified, tell Jaquez the man rang their doorbell eight times before kicking in their front door.

The young couple said they weren’t home at the time of the crime. But did add they received a text message after a motion sensor went off.

They tell us Jaquez at the time they didn’t think anything of it because their dog always triggers the sensors.

But when they got home they noticed their home had been ransacked.

The video shows the thief hauling away two TVs, a safe, a laptop and a 60-year-old ring that was passed down to one of the victim’s by his deceased grandfather.

As for Lyles-Anderson, she told Jaquez she feels lucky.

“I’m just fortunate I’m OK. Those are material things,” she said.