He died saving his family, but think what would have happened had he not had a TOOL for SELF DEFENSE!?!?!?

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Grieving wife tells of home-invasion ordeal

http://www.al.com/news/birmingham/Jan2000/4-e333353b.html

01/04/2000
CAROL ROBINSON
News staff writer

The searing pain in the left side of Terri Nealy’s chest wouldn’t ebb,
though the doctor assured her nothing was physically wrong.

Masked gunmen had held the 23-year-old UAB nursing student and her two
young children captive in their east Birmingham home for hours Saturday
night. Her husband, Jason, came to their rescue in a blaze of gunfire.
He killed her captors. They killed him.

He called her name twice before dying on their living-room floor.

It was Sunday night when Mrs. Nealy’s heart hurt and the doctor
couldn’t explain why. She called investigators to ask precisely how her
husband died. The bullet pierced his heart, they told her.

“Then I knew why there was pain in my heart,” she said Monday in her
first interview since the weekend ordeal. “We were so close that we
were like one.”

Nealy, 26, died early Sunday when he found career felons Deric Rowe and
Anthony Hayes inside his 87th Street North home. Nealy and Rowe, 25,
died at the scene. Hayes, 30, died later at University Hospital.

String of invasions

Investigators on Monday said they were trying to determine whether Rowe
and Hayes, who served time together at St. Clair County Correctional
Facility, could be behind a string of similar home invasions in recent
months.

“We hope it was them so it will stop,” said Birmingham police Capt. Roy
Williams.

Police said there could be other suspects; Rowe and Hayes seemed to be
communicating with another person with cellular telephones or
walkie-talkies, Mrs. Nealy said.

But as police were looking ahead Monday, Mrs. Nealy was grasping at the
past: their first kiss outside Mike’s Game Room when she was a freshman
at Woodlawn High School and he was a sophomore. The way he didn’t wipe
off her lipstick when it was over. The way he massaged her feet when
she was pregnant. The way held her hand when she pushed their daughter,
Jamie, into the world.

“We both always said that a kiss on the forehead really means love, and
he kissed me on the forehead every day,” she said. “He loved me and I
loved him, and we loved those kids.”

“Other than the Lord, he was always our protector. We were best
friends. I watched out for him just like he watched out for me. And he
died doing that.”

Mrs. Nealy was home with her son, 5-year-old Terry, and 1-year-old
Jamie while her husband was watching the Orange Bowl with friends
Saturday evening. He offered to stay, but she said she encouraged him
to go with his friends.

“We were laying in bed that morning, and he told me his New Year’s
resolution was to spend more time with his family, to make me happy,”
she said. “He said, ’2000 is going to be our year.’”

Something not right

About 10:30 p.m., Mrs. Nealy said, the dog barked. She was in the bed
with Jamie while Terry watched television in the living room.

“It came to my head that something wasn’t right, and then it just left
my head,” she said. Moments later, she heard a loud bang and the
burglar alarm sounded. She ran to the living room and was confronted by
Rowe and Hayes. They tied up Mrs. Nealy and shoved her and the children
into the bathroom as they ransacked the house. Though bound at the
wrists and ankles, Mrs. Nealy sat on the toilet and rocked her girl
while her son sat in the tub with the curtain drawn.

Rowe and Hayes “broke down the vacuum cleaner, took everything out of
the refrigerator. Clothes were everywhere,” she said.

Mrs. Nealy told them all her money was in her purse and they could take
whatever they wanted. They told her that if she was lying, they would
kill Jamie and then her.

The men asked for her husband, though not by name. The questions they
asked made her think they didn’t know him. “They asked if he sold
drugs, if he had any money, what kind of car he drove,” she said. Mrs.
Nealy vehemently denied that her husband, a former fork-lift operator
who took care of the children, has dealt drugs. Birmingham police said
Nealy didn’t have a criminal record and his name hasn’t surfaced in
drug complaints or investigations. Forced to undress

After ransacking the home, the men moved the children to a bedroom and
forced Mrs. Nealy to remove her nightgown. They covered her head with
one of her son’s little green T-shirts and told her they would wait for
Nealy. They fondled her.

“I panicked. I thought they were going to shoot me in the head. I
thought they were going to rape me. I begged them not to,” she said. “I
told them, ‘I work. I go to school. I’m a good person, and I don’t
deserve this.’”

After a while, they moved her and the children to her bedroom. Rowe got
next to her on the bed and said he’d seen her, even flirted with her,
but she had not reciprocated. Mrs. Nealy said she didn’t remember and
then asked him if that was why he was there to kill her.

He said, “I’m here because your husband is poisoning the streets. You
can do better. If you were with me, you wouldn’t have been home alone
tonight.”

“He said, ‘I know you hate me right now,’ and I said, ‘Not really.
Because of the grace of God, I haven’t suffered yet.’”

Rowe promised he wouldn’t hurt her or the children.

“What calmed me was my children,” she said. “Jamie was playing in my
lap. Terry was scared and kept wishing his Daddy was home to protect
us.

“He told me he loved me because he could see that I was scared. He told
me not to cry and said he wished the men would go away.”

“We talked and we sang and we prayed.” Husband arrives

Jamie fell asleep, and Terry nodded off. Mrs. Nealy’s cellular
telephone rang twice. It went unanswered. “I knew then he was coming
home,” she said. “I didn’t want him to come home. But I think somehow
he knew there was trouble.”

Moments later, she heard his car pull up in the driveway. “I heard him
holler, and then I heard gunfire,” she said. “When the gunfire stopped,
I heard him say, ‘Terri. Terri.’”

Mrs. Nealy crawled to the door. She saw her husband on the living-room
floor. One gunman was on his knees coughing, trying to stagger to the
couch.

“I went back in the bedroom and held the door closed with my foot,” she
said. She called 911, twice whispering to them to come.

“I couldn’t see the other one, and I didn’t know where he was,” she
said. “I just held an iron in my hand.”

She was still in the bedroom when the police arrived. Once freed and
dressed, she ran to her husband. “I kept saying, ‘Jason, get up.’”

? 1999 The Birmingham News. Used with permission.