Man convicted in Burbank home invasion sentenced to 15 years in prison
A Pasadena man was sentenced to 15 years in state prison for his role in a home invasion last summer that left an elderly Burbank woman with a fractured clavicle, broken nose and bruises all over her body.
Lonnie Garcia, 28, had been out of prison for about a month before he forced his way inside the woman’s Burbank home, pulled a sheet from her couch and tied it around her neck while also shoving it inside her mouth, police said at the time.
Garcia recently pleaded no contest to one count of first degree burglary with a person present. The remaining charges — including one count each of attempted first degree residential robbery and elder abuse — were dismissed, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office.
The case stems back to the evening of July 10 of last year, when 90-year-old Gerri Dickinson answered a knock at her door, shortly after her daughter had left her home.
There, a man told her he had good news for her, before forcing his way inside.
“I’m coming in to get your stuff, where are your jewels?” he asked, Dickinson’s daughter Tracey Cawdrey said in an interview just days after the robbery.
While Dickinson was trying to fight him off, he reportedly pushed her to the ground, threw a chair at her and threatened to shoot her.
“I said, ‘Go ahead and shoot me,’” Dickinson recalled after the incident, adding that she didn’t think he had a gun.
The man then left her and ransacked her bedroom, filling a pillowcase he took from her linen closet with her belongings.
Meanwhile, Dickinson called for assistance using her medical alert system.
When the suspect heard her talking, he called on the phone his accomplice, “Dick,” who appeared to be waiting outside. He told him things were not going as planned.
“Dick evidently said, ‘Well, you better leave,’” Dickinson said, and the suspect fled.
Police used surveillance footage collected near the scene to identify the getaway car used in the robbery.
The investigation led police to a Pasadena home, where they found Garcia, who investigators reportedly recognized as a suspect from the surveillance footage.
The second suspect was not identified.
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Alene Tchekmedyian, alene.tchekmedyian@latimes.com
Twitter: @atchek
