By By JOHN EBY / Niles Daily Star
CASSOPOLIS -- An Adamsville couple was presented a good citizenship award Thursday by Cass County Sheriff Joseph M. Underwood Jr. They survived a home invasion physically unscathed, but are still coping with emotional scars almost three years later.
They keep 2x4s jammed in the fortify the security windows which failed them. The windows are never opened. Steel doors are locked 24 hours a day, even when they're seated right inside them.
On Sept. 25, 2000, Charles and Patricia Warner returned from grocery shopping to find that their home on U.S. 12 had been ransacked.
Warner not only pursued the intruder off his property, "We chased him probably 20 minutes, up and down U.S. 12, past Eagle Lake and Harp's Corner, back and forth. We're retired folks and we don't have a cell phone. I was flashing my lights and blowing my horn and we were both flailing our arms out of the windows trying to get someone's attention. I think we got a lot of people's attention. They probably said, 'Look at those two nuts!' But no one called the sheriff.
Warner said the duo had robbed "12 or so places" in Indiana and "I think David Gizzi said it was something like 23 to 30 in Cass County. He said if it hadn't been for us going out on a limb, we saved a lot of people heartache because we did go through a lot of heartache ourselves.