A gun-toting burglar left a 16-year-old girl in tears as she feared for her life and the safety of her 12-year-old brother, a Fayette County jury was told Tuesday afternoon.
The brother recalled waking up Aug. 3 to the gunman “busting through” his bedroom door, and his sister crying, as the gunman threw a house phone downstairs and ordered him to pack up valuables from his room, all the while pointing a gun at both siblings.
Some of those valuables, including an Xbox video game system, were found hours later at one of the defendant’s homes, according to prosecutor David Younker.
The incident occurred at a home in the Ellen’s Ridge subdivision near the intersection of Milam and Lee’s Lake roads while the children’s mother was at work; their dad was deployed in Iraq at the time, the jury was told.
On trial are Arnold Alexander Floyd Jr., 20, of Deep Creek Place, Union City and Thaddeus Deonte Fowler, 20, of Wexford Trail, Atlanta. Both men, represented by separate defense attorneys, have the same legal strategy: blame the other guy.
Fowler’s attorney, in her opening statement, said Fowler was unaware that Floyd was going to rob the home at gunpoint, and that Floyd forced her client to participate in the robbery after pointing the gun at him.
Floyd’s attorney, in his opening statement, suggested that Fowler became upset after being inside the home for 30-40 minutes “and not getting what he wanted” from the girl, deciding on the spot to rob the place.
The children testified that in addition to having a black handgun pointed at them during the incident by Floyd, Fowler participated in the burglary by carrying items from the girl’s room, including a TV.
The girl testified that she invited Fowler to her home that day to pick her up after he had offered to buy her new shoes on a trip to Southlake Mall. She later admitted under cross examination that she didn’t tell her mother about the trip, and that she also hid the fact that she was text messaging and Facebooking back and forth with Fowler in the weeks leading up to the incident.
The girl said that she met Fowler through a mutual friend though they were not formally dating.
But when Fowler showed up that day, he asked to use the bathroom and then left the home briefly while the girl was on the phone with a friend to arrange a meetup at the mall, she testified.
Shortly thereafter, the girl heard the door chime signal again, and as she turned around, she saw Floyd pointing a gun at her, the girl testified.
“I said, ‘Oh my God, why are you in here?’” the girl recalled. “He told me: ‘shut up and give me the phone.’ And I gave him the phone.”
Floyd then forced her upstairs and ordered her to disrobe, the girl testified. She explained to the jury that after taking off her shirt, she refused to go further, which caused Floyd to scream at her to “go faster.”
The girl testified that after putting her shirt back on she convinced Floyd to let her go into her brother’s room, and that’s where Floyd took the house phone and her brother’s cellphone before ordering the brother to pack up valuables including the Xbox video game system.
When the getaway car was found at Floyd’s home hours after the incident, the Xbox had already been plugged in and was being used, Younker said in his opening statement. Also, a Hummer poster taken from the boy’s room had already been hung up in Floyd’s room, Younker added.
The getaway vehicle, Younker said, belongs to Floyd’s older brother.
Fowler and Floyd face the same charges: two counts of armed robbery, two counts of kidnapping, one count of burglary, two counts of first degree cruelty to children and two counts of aggravated assault.
Fowler’s attorney worked to chip away at the teenager’s credibility, at one point drawing an objection from Younker after she suggested in front of the jury that the prosecutor objected to a question because he didn’t want the jury to hear the information.
In the end, presiding Superior Court Judge Tommy Hankinson instructed the jury to remember that “what the attorneys say” is not to be considered evidence, which is limited to witness testimony and the physical evidence admitted during the trial.
