Armed Invasion, Getaway : Masked Pair Shoot Dog, Enter and Search Home, Then Hijack Car Nearby

Two men wearing ski masks and carrying rifles terrorized residents of a neighborhood here early Wednesday, hijacking a woman’s car at gunpoint after they broke into a home and shot that resident’s pit bull.

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No one was injured in the attacks, which began about 8:20 a.m. in the 13900 block of Locust Street, but the dog was left paralyzed and had to be put to death by a veterinarian.

Police Detective Mike Proctor said that after running from the man’s home, the pair accosted 28-year-old Sheila Robert, who was warming up her car in her driveway down the street. The neighborhood is two blocks from the intersection of Westminster Avenue and Golden West Street.

“I looked up and there were guns pointed at my stomach” through the open car door, a still shaken Robert recounted Wednesday afternoon. “I got out of the car and laid on the ground. I was so scared. My heart was pounding. All I could think of was, ‘Please don’t kidnap me. Please don’t take me away from my husband.’ I was a nervous wreck.”

Robert’s 27-year-old husband, Pascal, was asleep inside the home during the carjacking and awoke to the sound of his wife banging on their back door.

A native of France, Pascal Robert said the couple was already anxious after Monday’s earthquake and the subsequent aftershocks. He said the attack on his wife had left them both angry and disgusted.

“That’s it,” he said in a thick French accent. “We are definitely moving. We are moving back to France.”

Sheila Robert, a sales representative for a telephone company, said she uses her car extensively each day to travel to appointments, and wondered how she would be able to work this week.

“But the car is the least of my concerns,” she said. “I’m just so glad to be alive.”

Police said that Robert did the right thing by surrendering her car.

“It could have been a very violent end if she hadn’t cooperated,” Proctor said. “We would much rather be working a robbery case than a homicide. Just give up the car if you can. In most scenarios, they just want a car to get away.”

Proctor said Robert was simply at the wrong place at the wrong time. But an investigation is continuing into the initial holdup home invasion.

“I was sitting at my table reading the sports page when two guys came up to my side window and held a gun up to my head,” said the dog’s owner, who asked that his name not be used. “I put my hands up in the air. I ran out of the sliding glass door and the dog followed me, but then he turned around and went back into the house. That’s when they shot him.”

The man said the gunmen, who were not wearing the ski masks when they broke into his home, entered through a window, searched through his bedroom and left without taking anything. He said he ran into the street and yelled to a neighbor, who immediately called police.

“It may be drug-related--not necessarily on the victim’s part, but on the part of the suspects,” Proctor said.

The gunmen men escaped in Sheila Robert’s 1990 white Toyota Corolla with a license plate of 2TTU573.

Police described one suspect as white, about 29 years old, 5-foot-11, 170 pounds, with a mustache and light brown, shaggy hair. The other was described as a Latino of unknown age who is 5-foot-8 with a slim build and short brown hair.