Dchenoweth1969
Donna Chenoweth
My husband works all over the United States and is away a great deal. I am a stay at home mother of 5 teenage girls. If you all have kids, you know they run in and out of the house fifty times a day. well as for mine, living in a small quiet iowa town, the thought never occurred to any of us that the door needed to be locked in broad daylight. Especially when someone is home. WRONG! On may 10th 2011 I was at home alone. the children were all in school and I had layed down for a much needed nap on the couch. I awoke in a panic when I felt something extremely heavy on my chest and I couldn't breath. I opened my eyes and there was a man on top of me ripping at my clothes. I tried to scream but couldnt get alot of air. All I could think was, Please don't kill me. I held onto my clothes as the tore at them. then not getting anywhere, he dragged me off the couch. I was looking around to see if I could find anything to fight him off. Nothing. My cell phone in my purse in another room. Could not see or hear my 3 dogs anywhere. All I could do was kick, scream and try to protect my dignity. At one point i was able to run and get near the door that had been left open by the burglar, but I didn't quite get there before he had me pinned against the wall. I plead with him to stop, I even tried to make a deal of not telling anyone if he would just leave. I think the fighting and struggling of all that took an extremly long 5 minutes. He had his bottoms off and working on mine when i heard children yelling to each other out in the neighborhood. I prayed to god that he be gone before my babies came home from school. He must have heard those voices too because he pulled up his shorts and vanished out the door. Thankfully he did not acomplish what he had set out to do, but this traumatized me for months, not to mention the what if's. I went and got my phone from my purse to call the police, and I found a voice message from my neighbor on there from an hour before everything happened. He had been in and all throughout my home from 2:15- 3:30pm and my neighbor saw him enter and instead of calling the police, she thought i was gone and wanted to tell me that someone was in my home. I found my dogs locked in an upstairs bedroom. I did call the police, and they caught the man who worked at the only grocery store in town and had followed me home one day. The store did fire him immediately after his arrest thank god. I am thankful for so many things that didn't happen but I assure you, they will never happen again. I have applied for my ccw and I encourage you for your own and your families safety and the safety of your community to carry a firearm or we are no better than the criminal if all we can do is stand by and watch them destroy lives.