Victims recount terrifying Clarkston home invasion

CLARKSTON, Ga. - They were not sure if they would live or die.

Three armed men held a man and his niece, 16, at gunpoint inside their family's Clarkston apartment January 26. 

"You don't know what's happening in their minds," said the teenage girl, whose identity FOX 5 will keep private.  "So, you don't know if they're going to kill you or let you live.  Especially in those situations, not a lot of people come out alive when robbers come in and you're in the house." 

According to the Clarkston Police Department, the three men knocked on the door of the unit at the Portofino Apartments and when the girl's uncle answered the door, they forced their way in, demanding money. 

"They say, 'If you don't give us money, we're [going to] kill you.'  And they had big guns," he recalled. 

The teenager said the armed robbers repeatedly beat and kicked both her and her uncle throughout the ordeal.  One of the men, according to police, even committed sexual battery against the girl while he was alone with her.

"He pulled me by the hair," she explained.  "He kept touching me.  And I was like, 'Stop, please.  Stop.  I'm only 16, please don't do this to me.'  And then he was like, 'Be quiet.'"

The girl's mother returned home to see the apartment in shambles, but the male victim shooed her away.  That was enough, the two victims believe, to scare off the trio of robbers.

"I just kept crying when they left.  They had put me in the floor next to [my uncle] and all I kept doing was shaking, shaking," the teen said.  "I was like, 'Oh, my God.  This could have happened worse.'  I was like, 'This could have gone even worse.'"

The teen's mother reported she saw the men leave the complex in a gold Honda Accord. 

Clarkston Police ask anyone who recognizes the suspects from the police sketches to call investigators.

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