A night of Terror and no self defense weapon….
Gun Control creates Safe working environments by providing unarmed Victims!

What do we blame here, Knife manufactures? Shall we ban knifes/Metal tools too?

http://www.orcoastnews.com/headlight/pages/Terror.html

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KYLE ODEGARD
Headlight-Herald Staff

NETARTS – Darlene Parks, 74, is still afraid to go into her dream house, still has nightmares replaying her frightening beating on Feb. 14, where she was awakened in bed by a ski-masked man savagely hitting her with a metal tool, cussing and yelling, wanting to know where her money was. “I can’t go back there right now, and I’m not sure I ever can,” said Parks, her voice breaking under the memories.
“They were trying to kill us,” said her companion, Don Phelps, who was also beaten in what a police investigator described as a “night of absolute terror.”
The fact that the two men accused of the attack, Eugene Grant and Mark Jenema, are behind bars and charged with two counts each of attempted aggravated murder, among other crimes, serves as little solace for Parks and Phelps.
The elderly couple left the big city and found themselves victims where they moved to enjoy a wholesome, small town life.
Phelps, 67, wasn’t as injured as Parks, but was still suffering.
He misses Parks, who is staying with family in Yakima, Wash., as she recovers from her injuries, which include a broken nose.
Parks said she lost four pints of blood that night. Her head hasn’t stopped hurting from the blows, even though she’s taking prescription painkillers. “They just constantly hit on my head,” she said of the beating.
“I don’t think at any point I completely went out. It’s like a bad dream.”
Her arms and hands as well as her stomach and shoulders, were badly bruised from trying to shield herself from the blows.
Phelps wonders if Parks will ever return to the Whiskey Creek home they planned to buy, and were busy renovating.
“You just imagine it couldn’t happen,” he said. Blood was smeared on the wall and their bed was sopped with red, according to Phelps.
“He was so crazy, crazy, crazy and he wouldn’t stop beating on her,” Phelps added.
The attack was made more unreal as Phelps, who fell asleep on the living room couch while watching television, woke to the sound of his partner screaming, “Don, Don, don’t hit me, don’t beat me.”
“She thought I was beating her, because I was the only other person in the house,” explained Phelps. “I thought she was having a bad dream.”

Escape

When Phelps went to investigate the screaming, he said he found himself face to face with a ski-masked intruder who hit him over the head with a large, foot-long metal screwdriver.
Phelps said the man entered through the back door of the house, and went directly into the bedroom, where Parks was sleeping. Police have said the back door was unlocked.
Parks, dazed and confused, said she walked out of the bedroom and saw Phelps lying on the floor.
The ski-masked man saw Parks. He turned to rip out the kitchen phone, according to Parks, and she ran out the front door, through shrubs and to a neighbor’s house, where she pounded on a glass door, asking for help, and to be let inside.
She said she didn’t know how many people were involved with the crime, or if one of them was still after her.
But the neighbor wouldn’t let Parks into the household. Parks was in a nightgown and barefoot, bleeding profusely – there was so much blood in her right eye she said she thought it was gone. She kept pounding and pounding on the door.
The neighbor called 911.
Back in the house, the ski-masked man ripped out the other phone, and Phelps grabbed a kitchen knife, with which he scared the intruder out of the residence with. Phelps then went over to the neighbor’s house and found Parks, still waiting outside. He gave her his bathrobe to cover up with, even though he was naked underneath.

A former employee

Phelps said thought the attacker was Jenema because he recognized the man’s voice. According to Phelps and Parks, Jenema had worked for Phelps during the summer of 1999, helping him fix up pickups so they could be resold.
Police insisted they believed Grant, not Jenema, entered the house and attacked the couple.
“We are confident that Grant was the person that entered the house. I am confident that Grant did the actual beating. But both are legitimately charged for the crime,” said Tillamook County Sheriff’s Office Detective Mark Hannigan.
Phelps added that the perpetrator knew the layout of the house, and that Grant had never been there before. Phelps had met Grant once, but Parks had not.
According to Phelps, the suspects weren’t there just for money, but to get revenge on him and Parks for an incident three weeks before the attack. Phelps and Parks alleged that Jenema stole Phelps’ van, and Phelps asked for it back, angering Jenema, and his friend, Grant.
Phelps said he did not call police regarding the allegedly stolen vehicle, but rather called Jenema’s mother.
The van was returned, and Phelps said he got a threatening phone call where a voice said,
“We will be back to handle both of you.”
Grant and Jenema were arraigned on indictment on Feb. 23.
While the accused are processed through the justice system, the healing continues.
Parks is jumpy, but getting better every day. “I’m not going to let this destroy me,” she said.
Still, she can’t even consider going back to her Netarts home yet. “That doesn’t mean I won’t ever,” she added.
“I can’t say never, but it won’t be easy.”