Cell phone helps police catch suspects in Cary home invasion
CARY (WTVD) -- Two suspects have been arrested and charged in connection with an early morning home invasion in Cary.
Howard Freeman Earl, Jr., 21, of Guess Road, Durham, and Terrell Lee McLamb, 20, of E. Cornwallis Road, Durham, are each charged with first-degree burglary, armed robbery, and second-degree kidnapping. If convicted of all charges, they each could face up to 32 years in prison. Both are being held at the Wake County Detention Center.
About 5 a.m., Cary police were called to a home in the Bexley at Weston neighborhood about a burglary in progress.
Three women, a mother and two sisters, were asleep inside the home when the suspects kicked in a dead-bolted door.
"I hear commotion and I don't know what it is," said one of the women, who did not want to be identified because of the break-in. "I don't know if somebody was up and they fell, I have no idea what's going on."
"I hear a lot of rummaging and I hear my sister going, "okay, I'm coming, I'm coming. And I hear voices, and that's when I knew someone was in our house," she added. "I'm trying to dial 911, but by that time my door is open and it's like 'give me your phone, give me your phone.' He makes me follow him downstairs."
Their frightened mother was also downstairs inside her bedroom. The suspects kicked open the door after she peeked out and closed it.
"And they ask, 'where's the cash, where's the cash? If you just do what we say we're not going to hurt you, we just want the cash.' Me and my sister say 'we don't have any,' so then they turn to my mom, I guess because she's older," the victim said.
Their mother then gave the suspects some money.
"All of a sudden they were just like, 'Okay we got it. Let's go, let's go, let's go,'" the woman said. "Two of them ran out of her room, two of them, I guess, were still upstairs and ran downstairs, out the door and they were gone."
Authorities said the suspects fled the scene with an undisclosed amount of cash and at least one stolen cellphone before officers arrived.
"They had my phone, because the guy took my phone," the victim said.
Police were able to track down the stolen phone to southeast Durham. The suspects were apprehended behind a LaQuinta Inn on Westpark Drive. Durham police also located the vehicle the suspects used.
"Thank God! Thank God they got them, before it was anybody else," the woman said.
The men who broke in were caught on home surveillance video that's now part of a Cary Police investigation.
More arrests are expected, Cary police said in a statement.
