Family tied up, assaulted during home invasion in East Oak Lane

Philadelphia Police are seeking the public’s help in tracking down four men they say broke into a family’s East Oak Lane home at gunpoint, tying them up, and assaulting them before stealing their valuables earlier this month.

The four masked men, who were wearing black hoodies, robbed residents of the home on the 6600 block of North Seventh Street at 10:12 a.m. Nov. 6, police said. One of the people who live in the house was on the front lawn with a handyman who was working around the house when the four assailants forced them back into the house at gunpoint, his girlfriend said Wednesday.

The couple, who have lived together in the house since 2017 and run a business there, declined to give their names for fear of their family’s safety.

In surveillance video released by police, the assailants can be seen pulling up in a black Acura before getting out, sneaking behind parked cars, and jumping the resident and the handyman. Surveillance video from inside the house shows the men forcing the family and the handyman down onto the kitchen floor at gunpoint.

Footage also shows the masked men rolling a safe out of the house and getting into the black Acura they used as their getaway car.

The couple lives in the house with the woman’s four children, she said. Her four-year-old daughter was home sick from school when the armed robbers broke in and hit her boyfriend and the handyman, tying them up and threatening to shoot them all if they didn’t tell them where the safe in their house was.

“They told us they’d kill us if we don’t tell them where the money is. They said the same thing to my daughter,” the woman said in Spanish Wednesday, trembling as she recounted that day.

After opening a safe for the men, the woman grabbed her phone and locked herself in a downstairs bathroom, she said. The assailants were able to steal the safe, jewelry, and firearms, police said.

The men fled in the black Acura westbound on 66th Avenue, police said.

The violent robbery lasted less than five minutes, the woman said, but has left her and her family in a state of complete shock and fear.

Anytime a car pulls up and parks near the house, she looks out her window, worried about who it might be, she said. She is gripped with fear thinking about her children going to school and university, and whether they’ll be safe while the suspects are still not caught.

Her four-year-old daughter, who hid under a table after the assailants broke into their house, is traumatized, she said. Since the attack, the child has not been sleeping well, often waking up screaming “No.”

“I don’t think my life will ever be the same,” she said.

Authorities ask that anyone with information call the Philadelphia Police Department’s Northwest Detective Division at 215-686-3353/3354. People can also call in or a text a tip via the department’s tipline at 215-686-8477 or submit a tip via an online form.