Local News

Hope Mills Woman Survives Attack

Posted Updated

FAYETTEVILLE — Cumberland County investigators are searching for three men who attacked a 70-year-old woman, then ransacked her Hope Mills home. Investigators say the suspects stole Evelyn Johnson's car and abandoned it a few miles away. Johnson says it was the scariest ten minutes of her life.

Evelyn Johnson is in a state of shock, realizing how lucky she is to be alive. Monday afternoon, she went to answer the door and was attacked by three armed men.

"When I got to the door, they jerked the door open," Johnson explains, "and the other two come from around the porch and forced themselves on in."

While one of the men ransacked the home, the other two held a gun to Johnson's head. They then tied her from head to toe with electrical tape.

As the robbers stole jewelry, money, a shotgun and a rifle, one thought kept going through Johnson's mind:

"Were they going to kill me?" Johnson asked. "He had the gun on me. I didn't know what was going to happen."

A few minutes after the robbers left, Johnson struggled out of her bonds, pulled the phone down with her feet and dialed the phone with her tongue."

The suspect stole Johnson's keys and fled in her car. Investigators found it a few miles away abandoned on an Interstate-95 on-ramp.

Evelyn Johnson believes the robbers may have gotten the wrong house. That's because a couple of times they asked her where the deep freezer was, saying there was cocaine inside it. Johnson doesn't have a deep freezer.

 Credits 

Copyright 2024 by Capitol Broadcasting Company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.