TACOMA, Wash. — A Tacoma woman is speaking out after returning to her home to find a burglary in progress, resulting in her being threatened at gunpoint.
She was not injured, but the mental scars will last a long time.
Jessica Dettwiler told KIRO 7 she doesn’t know how she’s supposed to feel safe in her home ever again.
Dettwiler went to the grocery store on Sept. 23 and returned to her apartment along Pacific Avenue just before midnight. When Dettwiler walked up, she saw two men wearing black clothing and ski masks climbing out her window carrying a safe she kept in her bedroom.
“I told them to put it down, and they told me to pretty much, ‘Go eff yourself,’” Dettwiler said.
The men ran off.
Dettwiler said she went inside and locked the door, then a third intruder walked up to her from the back of her apartment -- a young woman who was not wearing a mask.
“I think she was hiding, probably in the bathroom,” Dettwiler said. “She walked out and said, ‘I’m sorry, they made me do this.’”
Dettwiler told the woman to stay put and that she was going to call the police. Then, one of the men came back to get the woman they left behind.
“That’s when the gun got pulled to my head,” Dettwiler said.
All three finally left for good, and Dettwiler said she then heard a round of gunfire from the street behind her apartment.
“I am traumatized,” Dettwiler said. “I can’t sleep at night.”
Dettwiler told KIRO 7 the thieves took about $2,000 worth of items from her apartment, including a purse, perfume, jewelry, a smart watch, and all her personal documents. A few days later, she went outside and her car was gone.
She believes the same thieves were responsible, because her spare car key was in the stolen safe, too.
“I’ve lived here for 13 years,” Dettwiler said. “I have never felt uncomfortable in my own home and now I do.”
Tacoma police reported no arrests in the case, but they said some of Dettwiler’s documents were later found in Spanaway.
Dettwiler is an Instacart driver and is out of work without her car. She started a GoFundMe to help pay for a move to a new apartment.