Break-Ins Set Alarming Trend

When Shirley Ives heard the doorbell ring, the 82-year-old widow got up from her chair, took an ice pick she had hidden in a vase of plastic flowers, and held it behind her back. She looked through the peephole, pushing on tiptoes to raise a body shrunken by osteoporosis.

"He looked like he was clean, shaven, what I could see of him," Ives said. "I just went ahead and unlocked the door. Stupid, I know."

A man slammed the door open, pushing so hard its doorknob punched a hole in the closet door behind it. Ives found herself on the ground, waving her weapon as the intruder wrapped her eyes and head in plastic tape and took her purse and keys.

So far, there have been nearly 100 home invasions like Ives' in St. Petersburg this year - nearly 30 percent more than for the same period of time last year, according to statistics compiled by the police department.

The numbers are rising in other communities across the Tampa Bay area. There was a 50 percent increase during the same period in unincorporated Pinellas County, 68 percent in Pasco County and a 50 percent rise in Clearwater. Tampa police and the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office are the exception; they're not reporting increases in home invasions.

Violent crime and robbery are up overall in St. Petersburg, and home invasion is a variety of robbery, said Maj. Mike Puetz, in charge of the crimes-against-persons division at the St. Petersburg Police Department.

"But even with those numbers, it is becoming more of a prominent crime," Puetz said.

In most home invasions, the victims are targeted because they are thought to have the drugs and cash that come with the narcotics trade, police administrators say.

That wasn't the case with Ives. She and other random victims are caught up in the wave of break-ins.

The man charged with breaking in to her home was visiting relatives in the area and noticed an older woman living alone, said Sgt. Al White of the St. Petersburg robbery squad. Authorities think it was a crime of opportunity.

All the intruder got was the keys to her car and house, $32, and her credit cards, one of which was used at a Citgo gas station to make a $45.45 purchase, Ives said.

Exactly two years before, an 85-year-old woman in Port Richey was the victim of a home invasion in which several suspects also raped her. They took her wallet, which contained about $60 in cash plus her credit cards.

No arrests have been made in the case.

Just this week, a fatal shooting near a Clearwater convenience store, which forced the lockdown of seven schools, was linked to a fatal home invasion Sept. 18, according to relatives of the home invasion victim. He is Joseph O'Malley Shaw, 22, and his brother, Gaylord Shaw, 19, was arrested in connection with Monday's shooting.

Numbers Could Be Even Higher

Because many home invasion victims are involved in the drug trade, some of the crimes go unreported, so police say the number of crimes may be greater than what's known.

"If you hit a drug dealer's house, generally speaking they are not going to report it," said Sgt. Michael Holbrook, head of the robbery unit at the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office. Only if someone in the house has been beaten or pistol-whipped do authorities get a call, Holbrook said.

Sometimes someone gets killed.

Puetz said three of St. Petersburg's 23 homicides this year occurred during a home invasion - and at least one of them was related to narcotics.

The only fatal home invasion handled by the Pinellas sheriff's office this year was also connected to drugs, Holbrook said. On July 1, three suspects, at least two of them armed, went to a home outside St. Petersburg's city limits where they thought drugs were being sold. Antron Peterson, 28, was shot and killed.

One arrest has been made in that case, and two other suspects are sought.

Of the three fatal home invasions in St. Petersburg, an arrest has been made in one. A transient is accused of beating and strangling a 63-year-old Vietnamese immigrant in July before driving off in the victim's 1988 Honda Accord.

In general, home invasions go unsolved if drugs are involved, or when they are prosecuted, convictions are often difficult because victims and witnesses are suspect, robbery sergeants say. That is, if they are willing to testify at all.

"Even if they are initially cooperative, after a few days that goes away," Holbrook said. Twenty-two of the Pinellas sheriff's office's 26 home invasions remain unsolved. In four of the 26 there have been arrests, and in two others suspects have been identified.

Twenty of the 82 home invasions in Pasco County since January 2005 have resulted in arrests, according to Pasco sheriff's statistics.

In Ives' case, a suspect - Dion P. Sookoo, a transient - was arrested after a notebook left behind led robbery detectives to him, White said.

Why The Spike?

In Pasco County, sheriff's spokesman Kevin Doll said that population growth of 5 percent annually helps explain the rise in home invasions. The percentage increase in the crimes, though, exceeds that by more than tenfold.

Puetz of St. Petersburg's police department has a population theory of his own.

Since the last census in 2000, Puetz said, a bubble has emerged in the demographic group responsible for most robberies and home invasions - men ages 18 to 25.

"We may have an increase in that population base that we're not aware of," Puetz said. Sookoo, the transient charged in the home invasion, was 19 when he was arrested in August. The transient accused of killing the Vietnamese immigrant was 20.

Then there are location-specific increases.

Holbrook of the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office says the upswing his agency and Clearwater police are witnessing is attributable to a couple of bands of men.

"A lot of it seems to be opposing groups - one group hitting another group that is selling or holding drugs," Holbrook said.

One reason young men might be committing more home invasions is that the so-called thug or gangster life is often glorified in hip-hop culture, in the culture's music and video games, Puetz said.

Three years ago, Puetz said, St. Petersburg detectives were investigating a drug-related homicide at a home when they realized a gang-on-gang video game had been playing on the television at the time of the slaying - and that it had been put on pause.

Ives' Struggle To Feel Safe

After she was thrown to the floor, Ives started stabbing blindly with the ice pick and thinks she struck the suspect in a fleshy part of his thumb and in his leg.

He asked her for her money, and she told him it was in her purse in the kitchen. "Just take it and go please," she remembers telling him as she lay on the floor.

"He wanted to know about other monies," Ives said. "I said I didn't have other monies." He also asked her for her jewelry.

"You live on $300 a month, you don't buy jewelry," Ives said. "You buy food."

She remembers telling him: "What do you think your mother would think of you doing something like this to an old lady?"

From behind, the intruder cut the tape he had wrapped around her eyes, leaving a gash in the back of her head that would require stitches. He took the tape with him, perhaps thinking investigators would pull his fingerprints from it, Ives said.

She also was badly bruised in the struggle.

"I don't think any place is real safe anymore," she said.

Still, Ives has taken measures to keep from becoming a victim again.

Her son drilled a new peephole in the door, at a height lower than the old one. He also bought her a new electric stun gun.

She had him change all of the locks on her home because the keys were never recovered. She also had the ignition to her Buick switched out.

And since detectives took Ives' ice pick as evidence, she had to buy a new one.

It sits at the ready in the same vase of plastic flowers.