Reiona Palmer enjoys playing in the playground on Monday with her 1-year-old daughter, Braylee. It’s a little moment she’s not taking for granted.
Not anymore. Not after what happened.
“It’s an eye-opener for me, now,” she said. “I would have never thought it would have happened to me.”
Saturday around 4:30 p.m. Palmer, not wanting to smoke inside her home went to her car for a cigarette.
“As I’m looking down a guy gets in my car,” she said.
Her Ring doorbell camera caught the moment. A person gets in the passenger side of her car, then shuts the door. Seconds later, four other masked and hooded figures storm inside her home.
“I’m just yelling ‘My kids are in the house’,” she said. “And he’s rumbling through my car [and] in my purse.”
Palmer was helpless as Braylee slept on the living room couch and her two other children, ages six and seven, were in an upstairs bedroom.
Shortly after that Palmer said the threat escalated.
“That’s when he put [the gun] to my head,” she said. “After that I didn’t say nothing no more. He kept asking me to unlock my phone [and] to unlock my iCloud [and] delete everything.”
Palmer said at this moment she thought her life was over.
“We believe in God,” she said. “I trust God. Like, He was with me that day. He was with me.”
She says she saw someone she knew and she reached for the car door handle and flung the door open.
“And I ran out, banging on my door, yelling ‘They robbing me with a gun’,” she said.
The person in her passenger seat got out, warned the other four still inside, then all five hooded figures ran out the same door they came in. It was finally an opportunity for Palmer to go inside and check on her children.
“Call the police, now,” Palmer can be heard screaming on the Ring camera. “Oh, my God!”
She said the five males didn’t take anything from the house, but they flipped over mattresses and went through cupboards and drawers. All that was taken from her car, she says, was $73 that was inside her purse.
“Get your life together,” Palmer says to whoever’s responsible. “Get a job. You can’t do that!”
Columbus police are investigating and said there is no suspect information at this time. If you recognize anything from the Ring camera footage, you’re asked to call the Columbus Division of Police Burglary Department at 614-645-2065.