Woman Bound, Robbed in Her Laguna Hills Home

A woman was duct-taped to a chair at gunpoint in her Laguna Hills home during a home-invasion robbery Wednesday morning, authorities said.

The 44-year-old woman was bound to the chair for more than an hour while two intruders ransacked the house for cash, jewelry and other valuables, authorities said. The robbers then fled in the woman’s new midnight blue Mercedes-Benz SUV, authorities said.

The woman, whose name was not released, told Orange County Sheriff’s investigators that she recognized one of the robbers as a worker she had hired to paint her house last week, sheriff’s spokesman Jim Amormino said.

She said the worker and another man came to her door on Rapid Falls Road in the Nellie Gail neighborhood at about 10 a.m. The worker told her his boss had sent him back to touch up some paint inside the house, Amormino said.

When the woman let the two men inside, they produced guns and demanded cash and jewelry. One man had a shotgun and the other an automatic pistol, Amormino said. After the men left, the woman freed herself and called her husband, who came home and called police, Amormino said.

The victim was “traumatized and upset, but there’s no visible injuries,” Sheriff’s investigator Steven Doan said.

Police were searching for the robbers late Wednesday. One is described as Latino, about 6 feet 2 inches, 250 pounds, 25 to 30 years old with black hair, brown eyes and a goatee. The other is described as Latino, 6 feet, 200 pounds, with black hair, brown eyes and a goatee.

Sheriff’s officials did not have an estimate of the total value of the stolen items.