Victims of a Gwinnett County daytime home invasion told police they tried to hide from a group of men claiming to be gang members before they were beaten and threatened with sexual assault.
The man and woman were inside their apartment on Club Drive near Lawrenceville on Jan. 10 when they heard a soft knock at the door, according to police report obtained Thursday by AJC.com. When they looked out their peephole, they told Gwinnett police they saw a man “trying to pick their lock.”
They called 911 and split up, the man hiding in a bathroom and the woman in a laundry room. Around 1:30 p.m., the man told police he heard a series of loud bangs and the bathroom door was shoved open. He came face-to-face with four men wearing blue bandannas and black beanie caps, armed with pistols and wearing white surgical gloves.
“Two males grabbed him and brought him into the living room and pistol-whipped him and told him to get on the ground, and then (they) began kicking him in the chest and face,” police said in the report.
Soon the woman was also dragged into the living room, where she said she was kicked and stomped on for screaming. The armed men allegedly threatened to shoot the man and rape the woman, claiming “we the Crip.”
Eventually, the men left the apartment with some of the couple’s electronics, a wallet, a cellphone and their keys. When officers arrived at the Atlantic Sweetwater complex, they saw a green car leaving the parking lot and speeding away.
The same car was seen on the complex surveillance footage arriving just before the home invasion and leaving right after, according to the police report. Investigators believe it is a green Toyota Camry with a red pillow in the rear window.
The victims do not think they were the intended target of the violent attack, they told police. Three people were recently evicted from their apartment, they said, and one of them was allegedly connected to a Crip-affiliated gang.
The incident is still under investigation.
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