Nanny cam home invasion video leads to arrest

Nanny cam home invasion video captured the burglary and assault of a New Jersey mother. Footage from the nanny cam led to the arrest of a suspect in the home invasion case Friday.

|
(AP Photo/Millburn Police)
This image taken from nanny cam video footage provided by the Millburn, N.J. police shows a man who forced his way into a home in Millburn on Friday, June 21, 2013, and attacked a woman.

Authorities have arrested a man wanted in a New Jersey home invasion that left a mother beaten, an attack that was captured on a nanny cam.

The Essex County prosecutor's office said 42-year-old Shawn Custis was arrested Friday in Manhattan by the prosecutor's office and the FBI. Custis faces charges of attempted murder, robbery, burglary and child endangerment.

The attack last Friday in Millburn was captured on a hidden camera in the woman's home. A man can be seen bursting into the home, punching and kicking the woman and throwing her down stairs while her 3-year-old daughter cowered on a couch. Police withheld the names of the woman and child.

County chief of detectives Anthony Ambrose said Friday that Custis was being transported to an undisclosed location in New Jersey.

Public groups and private individuals offered $20,000 for information leading to the arrest of the man who was seen punching and kicking the Millburn woman last Friday. Essex County Sheriff's Department spokesman Kevin Lynch tells The Star-Ledger of Newark the donors were outraged by the attack.

Portions of the nanny cam footage were aired on television Tuesday as police sought the public's help in identifying the man responsible for the attack, which occurred Friday morning in Millburn, a suburb of about 20,000 residents just west of New York.

Police Capt. Michael Palardy said he was revolted by what he saw the man do to the woman on the video.

"There was no reason for him to touch her at all because she would have willingly gave him what he wanted," Palardy said. "I've probably gone through this video 20 times, and it still sickens me every time I see it. He had no regard for her life. He didn't care if she lived or died."

Police withheld the woman's name to protect her identity and requested the faces of her and her child be blurred when the video was aired.

The woman suffered a concussion, bruises, chipped teeth and cuts around the mouth that required stitches, police said. It's believed she was knocked unconscious when tossed down the stairs, then awoke and called police. She was treated at a hospital and was released.

The nanny cam footage shows the woman sitting next to her child in front of the TV, then getting up to check out a noise out of the frame. It then shows her backing up and being attacked by a man who rushes her.

The burglar made three trips upstairs to rifle through the family's belongings, police said, assaulting the woman on the trips back to the first floor, kicking her, punching her and yanking her by the hair.

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Nanny cam home invasion video leads to arrest
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Latest-News-Wires/2013/0629/Nanny-cam-home-invasion-video-leads-to-arrest
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe