After dropping his sister off at school yesterday morning, Harris Sumra, 20, returned to the Long Island home he shares with his siblings and parents, and was surprised to find himself locked out. And that wasn't the only unusual thing. "I saw a car across the street," Sumra tells the Daily News. "There was a guy on the phone and he was looking at me. I knew something was going on." Confused, he knocked, and was greeted by an unidentified man who tried to drag him inside.
Luckily, Sumra broke free and ran down the street screaming for help, as three men armed with knives and a gun dashed out of the house and sped off in a white Ford Crown Victoria with tinted window. Inside the Bellmore house, Sumra's father, Arshad Sumra, 52, his 41-year-old mother, Shabnam, and a family friend were tied up in the bedroom. "Their hands were tied down," Sumra tells the News. "Their feet were tied. They had rope around their mouth so they couldn't scream. My mother was bleeding from her nose." Sumra's father tells Newsday (paywall) the attacker told him, "Don't move, I will kill you."
Meanwhile, a New York City firefighter who heard the commotion tailed the Crown Vic, and Nassau police caught up with them at Babylon Turnpike and Merrick Road. The suspects got out, but two ran off, and a police spokesman tells Newsday the officers, "fearing for their lives," fired on the car. The driver was arrested after being shot in the leg. "It was pandemonium," one local says. "Cops were walking the streets with big guns." At least 27 schools in the area were put on lockdown for four hours during the incident.
Two suspects were caught in nearby residential back yards, but Perp #4 almost made it: Newsday reports that he casually strolled into a local bar and ordered a drink while he waited for a cab. "He just came in and asked for a Corona," the manager recalls. "He looked like any customer. We didn't know anything was going on." He made it as far as the Southern State Parkway, where police spotted him in the back of the taxi and made the collar.
The victims of the home invasion sustained only minor injuries, and one officer twisted an ankle during the pursuit. The gun was not found, Newsday reports, but police did recover the $8,000 the perps absconded with. The Nassau police spokesman says it's unclear whether the family was targeted or if this was a random incident, but Sumra's brother-in-law believes they were targeted, because two weeks ago a relative noticed cars across the street that appeared to be staking out the house.
