A Devine family was awakened by barking dogs and noises outside their home before dawn on Thursday night/Friday morning, October 5. It happened at the Morris home off Black Creek Road CR 765 just outside Devine. When the homeowner approached two male suspects, they took off running and he chased the suspects on foot and then in his vehicle until police and sheriff’s department intercepted the two suspects in a Silver Ford Focus. The two suspects were arrested just in front of the school on FM 2200 near Cardinal Drive a little after 5 am.
The following is a first-hand account of the homeowners:
“I heard the dogs start barking around 3:30 the first time, so I got up and looked out the window but I didn’t see anything, so I laid back down. About 4 o’clock my 4-year-old came to me crying and saying she ‘heard a loud noise,’ so I looked out there again, but didn’t see anything. I was sitting in the rocking chair rocking my little girl back to sleep when I finally heard some kind of chains rattling around outside, which might have been from tightening the chains on our tractor which was sitting on a trailer hooked up to my truck. I stepped outside this time, and that’s when I saw them moving, and my truck light came on,” said mother Jamie Morris.
“I did not have my firearm, and my 4-year-old was clinging to my leg crying, so I couldn’t really approach them. So I stood at the door, and just started yelling for my husband, and he couldn’t hear me at first,” Jamie adds.
“While I was waiting for my husband, I yelled from the front door and asked them what they were doing. One of the men was standing in my backyard between storage building and my F-250 truck when he finally responded. He said-‘It’s just me, your neighbor, your cows were out again, and I was checking the fence.’ But I knew it wasn’t my neighbor’s voice.'”
“Shortly after my husband came running out the door, and they took off running,” Jamie says, “He took off chasing them down the driveway.”
Her husband Michael Morris chased the suspects on foot down the driveway about 75 yards, and then he ran back to his house and got in his truck to continue pursuing the suspects. He spotted what he believed was their getaway vehicle in a brushy driveway a couple driveways down from the Morris home.
“I saw the tail light tucked into that driveway, and I know nobody lives there,” Michael said.
Then Morris drove back to his home to get the cell phone he had forgotten.
Jamie said, “I was on the phone with dispatch, so he grabbed the phone from me and took off in the truck to chase them again.”
When he drove back out there to pursue the suspects, he watched the vehicle pull out of the brushy driveway.
“They didn’t have their car lights on, but I have a light bar on my truck so I turned that on and I could see them,” Michael said.
“I chased them all the way into Devine, about 7 miles, while on the phone with dispatch,” Michael said. “We went from Black Creek Road to Zig Zag, where one police officer cut in between us and got on them, but they did not pull over until they were near Devine Middle School, and that’s where they were arrested.”
Michael adds, “The suspects broke my steering column in the F-250 truck, trying to get into the ignition….The truck had a trailer with my new 2017 Massey Ferguson tractor.”
“They must have taken the other stuff they stole to their truck earlier,” Jamie adds. “The sheriff’s department recovered our chainsaw, as well as some tools and our Yeti cooler in their truck when they were arrested….When they questioned one of the suspects and asked him what brand the chainsaw in his car was, he responded ‘The Incredible Hulk.'”
“They did not recover my purse which was also missing, so we searched our property, and that afternoon we found my purse in a cactus at the edge of our driveway.”
This is not the first time the Morris’ have been burglarized.
“We had someone else break in and ransack our storage building in Hondo twice before, so we decided to rent a Conex box and keep all of our stuff in the Conex box at our house….then our house got burglarized! We just moved into our new house at the end of August, but have only been living here for about a month so far. Ironically it was my 4-year-old’s first night sleeping in her own bed, too!”
“I hear every little noise now, I can’t sleep at all, and all 3 kids want to sleep in bed with us now, ” Jamie adds, “All of our firearms were locked up for the safety of the kids, but I went ahead and ordered one of those gun safes that only open with your fingerprints, so I can keep one near the door now. We also invested in a security alarm.”
Jamie adds, “Our cattle had gotten out of the fence that Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday before the break-in, and so we think maybe they might have had something to do with that and they could have used that as a time to scout out the property. I had found my gate open after neighbors called to let me know the cows were out, but it also looked like there was some damage to our fence. I had never had an issue with our cows getting out until a week prior to this, when it starting happening every day. We are not sure, but for him to respond like that makes me think that could be what happened.”
Two men were arrested and charged with Burglary of a Vehicle.