DETROIT (WXYZ) — The family says the suspect stood on a dumpster to get into the house through a bathroom window. Once inside, he unlocked other doors in the house and headed to one of the bedrooms, where he put a knife to a nine-year-old girl’s throat.
Though unharmed, the nine-year-old niece is still shaken up after the home break-in that happened around 3 am Monday, January 13th.
“She’s still frightened. She’s still traumatized. Any noise being made, she gets scared and spooked out,” said Breana Pearl, the girl’s aunt.
“A guy approached her at her room door, and he put his finger up and said, ‘Shhh,’ and she got kinda scared. She didn’t know what was going on, then he approached her with a knife and put it up to her neck and told her to stop screaming, kept telling her to be quiet, and she just started screaming,” said Pearl.
That woke up the girl’s mother, who bolted from her room to see the suspect running out of her front door on Hubbell near Schoolcraft. Her neighbors are stunned.
"Very frustrating, yeah. That somebody would do something like that," says neighbor Chris Robertson.
A Detroit police spokesperson says the department is actively investigating the case and has stepped up patrols in the area.
“It’s been over a week now since this happened. For so many people too not know about what’s going on in the community in regards to someone actually breaking into somebody’s house and putting a knife up to a little nine-year-old girl, you tell me what community that flies in,” said Isiah “Zeek” Williams.
Williams heads up New Era Detroit, one of the city’s community violence intervention groups. Men from his team have been canvassing the area since the break-in. Earlier this week, they found a loaded shotgun in an abandoned house next door to the home in question.
“For one to be so close, a situation like that, it’s even more alarming, and once again, not saying the shotgun belonged to the person who did that, but it’s close enough for concern,” said Williams. “We’re going to treat it as such and make sure we put ourselves in the understanding that there is a real predator out on the loose, and the community needs to be to first and foremost informed and first and foremost vigilant.”
Anyone with information about that break-in please call Detroit Police Department’s Second Precinct at 313-596-5240.
