Woman says she encountered burglar inside home before being attacked by intruder
Woman encounters burglar inside home
An Orlando woman said she came face-to-face with a burglar who was running out of her home in College Park. She entered her two-story house and said she encountered the intruder running down the stairs. He attacked her, knocking her to the ground. She attempted to take a photograph of the license plate of a getaway car and said the suspect backed over her.
ORLANDO, Fla. - It’s now four weeks to the day and Dannie Fowler is still recovering from her injuries after she interrupted a burglary in progress inside her College Park home.
“I never thought it would happen to me. That’s what…I never thought I’d be robbed here and that I’d be attacked,” said Fowler, who has lived in the same home for nearly 25 years.
“I’d just gotten to right here, and I heard somebody running, and he just flew down the stairs right here,” Fowler explained, standing just inside her front door looking up her stairs.
Fowler said her instincts kicked in and she tried grabbing her designer suitcase that the bad guy had filled full of her stuff out of his arms. That’s when she says he attacked her.
“He did throw me really hard, knocked me really hard into that wall,” Fowler said.
However, that didn’t stop her, so she ran out of her front door after the burglar, chasing him out to her driveway.
“I had my phone with me so I took a picture of his tag, and when I did that, he threw the car into reverse and sent me flying,” Fowler said.
Then she said he ran her over shattering the bones in the top of her foot and leaving her face bruised and bloodied, getting away with priceless heirlooms.
“Fifty-inch strand of pearls from my honeymoon. Big pearl earrings from my grandmother. It’s hard. Those were things I planned to pass on,” Fowler said.
That’s not all he stole, as Fowler said the intruder also took her sense of security.
“Every time I hear a door close and no one says anything, someone comes in the house, a strange car in front of my house, all the things I never thought of before make me jump.”
Fowler said she typically keeps the same routine every day -- she will pick her son up from school at the same time every weekday afternoon.
“He had to have been watching me,” Fowler said.
Only that day, her son was catching a ride with a friend. She was gone from her home for less than 20 minutes on a run to the drugstore. She is now mixing up her routine and urging her friends and neighbors to stay on high alert since Orlando police officers have not yet caught the suspect.
“Even though you know your neighbors, you don’t know who could be out watching you,” Fowler said.
She described her attacker as a white man in his 40s and clean-cut. If you have any information about this crime, call Orlando Police or Crimeline 1-800-423-TIPS (8477).