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Robbery Suspects Douse Family's Home With Pepper Spray

SACRAMENTO (CBS13) — A Sacramento family is recovering after a violent pepper spray attack in their home.

The armed robbers were caught on camera, with their guns drawn, but they used their pepper spray instead.

It happened at 9:30 p.m. on Saturday in the of 5600 block of Valley Glen Way in South Sacramento.

The victims say they were followed home from the grocery store and the robbers wanted cash. But as we see in surveillance video, they got burned, by their own pepper spray.

The video starts out with a woman bringing home groceries when four hooded robbers push through right behind her.

They're armed with guns and big bottles of pepper spray.

Each one, dousing the house, before slipping and sliding on the tile floor.

"And they kept spraying non -stop and it was flying in the room and she was gagging and coughing in there," said one of the (anonymous) victims.

She described her baby niece. Her mom had rushed her to the bedroom, moments earlier. The robbers broke down the door.

"They wanted money. They came after each one of us wanting money. They were saying like 'Where's the money where's the money,'" she said.

But the victim, too rattled to show her face, didn't hand over cash.
She ran out the door in a haze of pepper spray, alerting her neighbors.

"I was blinded in my eyes and I was trying to see the best I can," she said.

Less than five minutes later, the men took off through the front door, where they came in—one, grabbing Amazon boxes on his way out—leaving the South Sacramento community, on edge.

"In the last year maybe it's gotten worse... the street itself all neighbors is fine ...it's just that people are coming into the area," said Neighbor Bill Simpson.

Simpson says people in the neighborhood are getting smarter about protecting themselves.

"All of us have alarms. We've got cameras, cameras, cameras. But you know even those cameras really don't help," he said.

But in this case, cameras show how one family's quick trip to the grocery store, turned into a nightmare. And a lesson.

"I'm not gonna let my guard down and always gotta make sure no one's following me home," said the victim.

Sacramento Police detectives are still following leads.

And working on the suspects' description.

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