It was a quite Sunday night on Estes Lane, just a few miles southeast of the Fairfield County Airport; the kind of typical Sunday night one might expect on the outskirts of Winnsboro. But as the hands on the clock ticked passed midnight, and Sunday night became Monday morning, that silence was shattered, and shattered violently.
A 32-year-old woman living in the 1300 block of Estes Lane was awakened at 1:30 a.m. Aug. 20 to the sound of her front door crashing open. Two masked men brandishing handguns burst into the home, entered the bedroom and began demanding to know the location of the safe. When the woman refused to cooperate, the men beat her savagely, punching and kicking her about her head and body. Before fleeing the home, one of the men fired a single shot from a 9mm handgun, striking the woman through the leg.
The men left the scene without stealing a single thing, and the woman, lying bleeding on the bedroom floor, was unable to determine in what direction or in what kind of vehicle the suspects fled.
The brutal irony, the Fairfield County Sheriff’s Office said, is that there was no safe in the home. Even worse, the only other witness to the horrific incident was the woman’s 2-year-old child, who was not injured in the incident.
Investigators arriving at the scene found that the front door had been kicked in. Also located at the scene was a single 9mm shell casing. The woman was transported by ambulance to Richland Memorial Hospital where she was treated for her injuries.
The Sheriff’s Office said they believe the incident was not just a random act by a roving band of criminals, but was instead a targeted assault on the Estes Lane home.
