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Team coverageSalt Lake City police are looking for three men involved in a home invasion robbery. It happened just after 11:30 p.m. Tuesday near 1500 East Harvard Avenue (1175 South).
The Salt Lake Police Department says this is the fifth home invasion robbery in the last month where people have been assaulted inside their homes.
A tarp hangs over the entire home, making it hard to see inside. The victims think that's why they were targeted, but police don't think it's so random.
Police say three men, all wearing dark, hooded sweatshirts and masks, approached Carl Ward who was smoking outside the home. The men pulled out a gun and forced him inside. Three other people were inside the house.
Carl Ward said, "They were like, ‘Where's the money, where's the money? We know you have money, you live up here; it's all rich people up here.'"
Ward says one of the robbers asked him if "Todd" was there. He said there was no "Todd."
"He hit me in the back of the head with a pistol. I heard him cock it," he said.
Another victim, Steve Stoffel, said, "He pistol-whipped me right in the back of the head, and as Carl said, they started yelling at us to get on the ground."
The attackers made Ward, Stoffel, and two other roommates strip down to their underwear and lay on the kitchen floor with a gun held to their heads while the two other suspects searched the house.
Stoffel said, "They started taking our wallets, watches, cell phones, anything they could get right away."
Investigators say anytime they moved, the suspects hit them with objects or threw glasses at them.
Ward said, "At one point, they kind of got fed up looking and not finding much and left us alone. We got the opportunity, jumped out the window, ran down the street and called police."
When police arrived the suspects were gone, so were the victims' laptops, cell phones and gaming systems.
All four victims suffered cuts and bruises to the back of their heads, arms and backs. They told police two of the intruders carried handguns and the third one carried a black rifle. The victims say they did not recognize the masked robbers.
Stoffel says he still can't believe something like this would happen in their neighborhood, let alone to them. "We live in such a nice place you know, and all of these crazy things are just all of a sudden happening we hear, we really don't know what to do with the whole situation now," he said.
Anyone with information about this robbery should call the Salt Lake City Police Department at 799-3000.
The Salt Lake City Police Department says they are not sure if the suspects in this home invasion are connected to any of the other four, they tell us that they are investigating all of them.
E-mail: ngonzales @ksl.com
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