2 Robbers Invade Home, Take Jewelry, Car, Pit Bull

Two gunmen forced their way into a Quartz Hill home early Sunday, tied up the residents and stole jewelry, a car and a pit bull, authorities said.

At about 1:15 a.m., two men wearing stocking caps banged on the front door of a house in the 6800 block of Hemp Court, an unincorporated area of the county near Lancaster, said Lt. Axel Anderson of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s Lancaster Station.

The victims--John Carpenter and his girlfriend, Laurie Guerich, both 32--said the men forced their way in and then duct-taped the couple’s wrists and ankles.

“[The robbers] demanded drugs and money but didn’t get any of the above,” Anderson said. The suspects then pistol-whipped Carpenter and broke his arm. Guerich did not appear injured, Anderson said.

“There’s some indication that the victims recognized the suspects, that the suspects knew the layout of the house,” Anderson said.

The robbers took two telephones, several rings, a watch and a necklace belonging to Guerich, said Deputy Mark Round. The victims told sheriff’s officials that the men also took their pet pit bull and drove off in Guerich’s 1995 green Mercury Tracer.

Round called the robbery unusual.

“There are things that don’t seem to make a lot of sense in it,” said Round, who declined to elaborate.

The victims said they freed themselves after about 45 minutes and then called authorities, Anderson said. Paramedics arrived shortly before police.

The victims described one robber as a white man, about 25 to 35 years old, with blue eyes and a medium build, 5-feet-8 to 6-feet tall. He wore a black stocking cap and a red-and-black checkered long-sleeved wool or flannel shirt. He brandished a blue steel semiautomatic 9-millimeter pistol, Anderson said.

The second man was a white man, 25 to 35 years old, with a black mustache, about 5 feet 9, weighing 180 to 200 pounds, the victims told sheriff’s investigators. He wore a blue stocking cap and a gray-and-black wool or flannel jacket, Anderson said. The second robber carried a blue steel .357-caliber revolver.

Though Carpenter’s arm was in a sling when sheriff’s deputies arrived, he refused medical treatment, Round said.