Cops: Masked bandits rob family of coin bottle
Arizona Coin Collector
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/ny-lirob1109,0,103233.story?track=rss
Cops: Masked bandits rob family of coin bottle
BY MATTHEW CHAYES
matthew...@newsday.com
11:40 AM EST, November 8, 2008
All this for some spare change?
Three masked bandits, each armed with a gun, charged
into a family's East Patchogue home early Saturday
morning, made a beeline for an upstairs bedroom and
stole ... a Poland Spring water jug filled with
coins, Suffolk police said.
The assailants, who later fled from the home at 109
Pine Neck Ave. with the heavy, cumbersome container,
apparently knew that the 21-year-old young man had
the money in his room, said Det. Sgt. Daniel Molloy
of the Suffolk Police Fifth Squad.
"They just went straight to the son's room and
nowhere else," Molloy said. "They're yelling at
them, 'Give me the money!' "
Before the bandits went into the home, they
encountered the young man's 51-year-old father,
who was outside about 2 a.m. returning from a
late-night trip to buy milk for breakfast.
Upon his return, the father felt punches and
something -- possibly a gun -- hit him on the
head, police said.
"Whatever it was knocked him down," Molloy said.
The bandits took several hundred dollars from
the father's pockets and then raced toward the
bedroom, where the son was watching a movie
with a friend while the son's girlfriend was
sleeping nearby, police said.
"The door was closed and they either kicked it
or knocked it in," Molloy said. "There was a
lot of commotion going on."
Police said the family -- there were five
family members home at the time -- could not
provide an estimate of how much money was in
the jug.
"They said they've been saving for a
while," Molloy said.
Because of how heavy the jug must have been,
Molloy said, detectives surmised the bandits
had a vehicle waiting nearby to drive them
away from the home.
The bandits fled in an unknown direction,
police said, and the father was treated at
Brookhaven Memorial Hospital in East
Patchogue for superficial wounds,
police said.
And the milk the dad had gone out to buy?
The gas station didn't have it.
..