Armed intruders invade, ransack Groveland woman's home, investigators say

GROVELAND, Fla. — When Toni Welcome answered her door Thursday night, what waited for her on the other side left her traumatized.

“My hands are shaking so bad,” she told Channel 9 on Friday.

At the door were three men who forced their way inside, forced Welcome to the ground and used a shirt to blindfold her.

One of the men pointed a gun at her head and another shot a friend also in the home in the eye with a BB gun, Welcome said.

While she stayed curled up in a corner of the room, the men ransacked her home.

“I just wanted to live,” Welcome said. “I didn’t want to die.”

The men opened cabinets and drawers, tossed mattresses, gutted closets and cracked open a safe, all the while demanding money, Welcome said.

“They kept asking, ‘Where’s the cash? Where’s the cash?’” she said.

The men made off with jewelry, money and prescription pain killers from Welcome’s purse.

They also stole her Hyundai Accent, investigators said.

Losing some of her things in the robbery didn’t matter much, but what bothered Welcome was the thought that it could happen again.

“A little bit of cash and jewelry and my pills wasn’t worth dying for,” she said. “I’m afraid they’re going to come back.”

Welcome told Channel 9 that her friend who was injured in the home invasion was OK.

The individuals involved in the robbery remained on the loose Friday.

Cox Media Group