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Predawn intruder terrorizes couple

By JODIE TILLMAN
Published September 18, 2006

PORT RICHEY - Sunday morning at the LoPinto home started in the same easy silence it always does.

He rose before 4 a.m. to get ready for Mass. She got out of bed, found his good white shirt and green slacks and laid them over a chair.

As he shaved, she lay back down.

Then, the couple heard breaking glass.

"What was that?" asked Joseph LoPinto, 88.

Before he knew it, a man wearing a motorcycle helmet and jacket pushed his way into the bathroom. He demanded money.

"I grabbed his jacket, and he grabbed my arm," LoPinto said.

The man pushed LoPinto, who walks with a cane, to the floor.

In the bedroom, Katherine LoPinto, 85, grabbed the telephone and dialed 911.

The operator told her to stay on the line.

But the intruder grabbed the phone from her hand.

"Where's the money?" he demanded.

"I said, 'What money?' " Katherine LoPinto said.

On the bathroom floor, her husband was struggling to his feet.

"I couldn't get up," he said.

The intruder opened drawers and threw the contents on the floor, she said. He grabbed her purse and a rifle that belonged to her husband.

Then, the intruder fled through the door he had shattered to get in.

The assault left Joseph LoPinto with purple, splotchy bruises on his arms. It left his wife in a state of anxiety.

"I just kept saying, 'Please, Please,' " she said. "I was just so scared."

A neighbor heard a motorcycle leaving less than a block away, said Lt. Rick Moore of the Pasco County Sheriff's Office. Deputies say they think someone else was driving the motorcycle.

The man discarded the rifle a short distance from the home, Moore said. Neither authorities nor the LoPintos would say how much money the man took.

This is not the first time a burglar has targeted the LoPintos. The couple say someone has tried to break into their home on three prior occasions.

The Sheriff's Office has records of two break-in attempts, Moore said.

In either case, it raises the question: Why would someone pick out that home?

Authorities would not say whether they think the couple were being targeted. And the LoPintos say they know of no reason they were attacked.

At one time, Katherine LoPinto said, the couple had kept much of their cash in the home. But when Joseph LoPinto had to be hospitalized with health problems about a year ago, Katherine figured it would be safer not to have so much money in the house. They opened a checking account.

The LoPintos moved to Pasco from New York nearly 20 years ago after he retired from New York City's Parks Department.

Sundays are when Joseph LoPinto goes to the 7:30 a.m. Mass at St. James Catholic Church. He gets up early so he can sit in his living room chair and say the rosary.

"He's very religious," his wife said.

At their home on Sunday afternoon, Katherine LoPinto's twin sister, Mary Catanzaro, who lives in an identical house on the other end of the street, tried to comfort her. The two women spoke of the terror they feel now.

"I don't wish it on anybody," said Katherine LoPinto, burying her face in hands.

"You're scared, aren't you?" she asked her husband.

Hard of hearing, he shouted "What?"

"Scared!" the sisters said in unison.

Joseph cracked his knuckles and looked out the living room window, where his cane was propped. "I wasn't scared," he said. "I don't get scared. I'm too old to get scared."

[Last modified September 17, 2006, 23:01:59]