Police Investigate Foiled Break-in at home of Buckhead Author

ATLANTA - A private security guard chased away two would-be burglars Saturday night at the home of a popular author.

Danielle Rollins said she was inside her home on Blackland Road in Buckhead when she heard people outside.  Two men had jumped Rollins's back fence and were arguing, she recounted, when the armed guard spotted them.  That guard tried to stop the men, but the pair lead him on a chase through the neighborhood. 

According to an Atlanta Police Department narrative, the guard "was running behind the males, when one of them dropped a blue backpack by a tree." 

That backpack, police later discovered, contained binoculars, gloves, respirators, bullets and duct tape.

Officers searched for the two suspects, but could not find them.  They remain on the loose. 

"I kind of fell apart yesterday," said Rollins.  "I think it was one thing to know they found a backpack with guns, and then to start putting all the dots together and think, gosh they wouldn't have search lights and K-9s if there weren't something bad in that backpack."

Rollins said she hired the guard earlier this month after she was the victim of two break-ins in less than a week.

"I didn't sleep last night at all," Rollins said.  "All I kept thinking about was what if they had gotten in, what if I hadn't hired the security?"

Rollins just recently moved into the home, though it is still under renovation.  She wanted to increase the height of the fence that surrounds the property from four feet to eight feet tall, but city officials denied her request for a variance.  Now, she plans to ask for approval of a six-foot-tall fence. 

"I'd like to have a ten foot setback because my feeling is if somebody's going to try to climb over a fence, I'd rather it be at the front of the street so that my neighbors can see it happening--not 30 foot set back," she added.