Home invaders pick on wrong guy

JAY SMITH/THE LANTERN Brandon McCoy sits outside his home on East 15th Avenue Tuesday afternoon. McCoy, 19, and four friends were tied up during a home invasion. He still managed to dial 911 and police caught the robbers in the act.

Even though he was tied up and threatened at gunpoint, a local 19-year-old managed to call police with his cell phone Monday night and lead them to two men who might be responsible for a string of home invasions near the Ohio State campus.

"I was just in my room upstairs and didn't even know anyone was home until these two guys bust into my room with a gun," said Brandon McCoy, the resident of 426 E. 15th Ave., originally from Dublin, Ohio, who called the police.

He said the two men, armed with a handgun and a crowbar, forced him and his roommate to the ground before tying them up with shoelaces and ransacking the house.

The home invasion lasted more than hour as the two men loaded stolen property from the house into a van that belonged to one of the home's residents. Over the course of the robbery, McCoy's other two roommates and a friend came into the house, unaware of the robbery.

"I really thought it was a joke when a guy in a ski mask came down the stairs, until he placed a gun to my head and knocked me down with it," said Tim McLaughlin, who lives in the house and had just arrived home from work. "They said you better cooperate or we'll shoot you."

After tying up and robbing the newcomers, the two intruders continued to move property from the home to the van. While they left the bound men unattended in a room upstairs, McCoy managed to pull out his cell phone from his pocket and call the police. Officers from the Columbus Division of Police arrived at the house within minutes, McLaughlin said.

The robbers attempted to escape on foot through the back of the house, but police chased them and arrested the suspects a block away on East 14th Avenue. The two men, Ajani Ware, 23, and Brandon Crowder, 21, both Columbus residents, have been charged with aggravated robbery.

The robbery followed a pattern of recent home invasions in the University District. There were three similar robberies between Monday, March 9 and Saturday, March 14. In each of the cases, two armed men stormed the house, holding the residents at gunpoint while looting their home. Police say they will present evidence from these robberies to the Franklin County Grand Jury as consideration for additional charges against Ware and Crowder.

"We are reviewing those three prior cases now to compare for similarities," said Sgt. Shaun Laird of the Columbus Police Robbery Unit.

Police have not released a motive for the robberies, but Sgt. Laird said that "typically these are not random acts of violence."

JAY SMITH/THE LANTERN Two armed robbers invaded this East 15th Avenue house Monday night. The intruders tied up the home's four residents and a neighborhood friend, but one of the residents still managed to call police on his cell phone. Officers arrested the two suspects, who might have committed similar robberies last month, police say.

In each of the three home invasions in March, there was some type of drug or drug-related paraphernalia reported stolen, including a small bag of marijuana and a bong. Police do not know if drugs played a role in these home invasions, though, and there was no such loss reported in the robbery Monday.

Police said that there were no injuries reported in the East 14th Avenue robbery, and all of the stolen property was recovered.

"They said we were the luckiest guys alive to get robbed and held at gunpoint, but then get all of our stuff back with no one hurt," McCoy said.