SUGAR LAND, Texas – An elderly, wheelchair-bound Sugar Land woman was the victim of a mid-afternoon home invasion.
Police said Leola Boswell, 86, who spends her days making quilts for Bosnian orphans, was robbed at gunpoint when three men burst through her front door on Wednesday.
"Nice looking men, I was expecting them to be from the neighborhood checking on houses," said Boswell.
Boswell said the men knocked on her front door on Ravenscourt Drive and, not sensing any danger, she unlatched the bolt. Boswell said she did not realize one of the men had already turned the door knob and was waiting for her to unlatch the bolt.
"That arm shot through there and he got me and was holding me, threatening me and said, 'I'll kill you, just be still,'" said Boswell. "He suspected I had some kind of alert on me and he said, 'You touch it, I'll kill you.'"
Boswell said while one man kept pushing through the house, his two partners communicated on hand-held radios as they went room-to-room searching for jewelry and cash.
"'Where's your jewelry, where's your jewelry case?' I said, 'This is it,'" said Boswell, showing nothing but a modest watch. "All this time I'm saying, 'I don't have it, I don't know. I don't have any money. I'm just a broken old widow woman and I'm not wealthy. I don't know why you're picking on me.'"
During the robbery, Boswell's daughter, who lives a few houses down, came over to check on her mother.
"When I walked up, they said, 'Your mother is OK. We're painters. You can go on in,'" said Doris Freeman. "This is a really safe neighborhood. Who would have thought they would have come here?"
Police described the three robbers as Hispanic males between 5 feet, 6 inches tall and 5 feet, 8 inches tall with heavy builds and short hair.
Freeman said the men were driving a white SUV, possibly a Jeep Cherokee with a possible partial license plate of D61.
If you have any information about this crime please call Sugar Land police or Fort Bend County Crime Stoppers at 281-342-TIPS.