Family night becomes family nightmare.(Exercising The Right)(home invasion)

On the evening of June 15th, five family members gathered together at Edward Hudson's mobile home in Franklin County, Virginia. They included Hudson, his nephew Billy Davis, Davis' girlfriend Cynthia Kirby, and two of Davis' nephews, ages seven and 12. The youngsters had passed their classes in school and were watching pay-per-view wrestling matches as a reward.

As described by Davis and Kirby during a telephone interview with the Roanoke Times, at around 10 p.m. Kirby went to the kitchen to place a bag of popcorn in the microwave, then went down the hall to check on some laundry. An armed man suddenly burst through the front screen door and announced a robbery. As summarized in the June 21st Times, he "ordered everyone to their knees, and shot a hole in the ceiling with a 9mm rifle to emphasize his point," after which "another man stepped in behind him, wearing a black leather mask."

When Kirby heard the commotion, she quietly backed into a bathroom, shut the door, stepped into the bathtub, and closed the shower curtain. Then she heard one of the robbers yell, "Go get the b****. I know she's in here somewhere."

The masked robber searched until he found her. Pulling her from the tub by her hair, he dragged her to the kitchen, tied her hands behind her back with the duct tape, groped her, then taped her ankles together. Placing something to her head, she could not tell what it was, he told her, "Do not look up or I will blow your brains out."

Meanwhile, the armed man struck Davis in the head and several times in the back with the rifle butt, then began beating Hudson. He demanded drugs and money. "We didn't have nothing to give," Davis recalled. "I honest to God think they came to the wrong house."

One of the blows knocked Davis to the floor ...