Investigators search for violent home invasion burglars

PORT ORCHARD -- Police in Kitsap County are on the hunt for suspects in two violent home invasion burglaries.

The attacks both happened last Thursday and in at least one attack a gun was used, police said. Investigators want to determine whether these two attacks are related and if there have been others.

"I was still half asleep," one victim, Taylor Surowiec, said. "I didn't know if it was real or if it was a nightmare. It was 3 o'clock in the morning and there was banging on the door and I just thought it was my friend coming back to grab some of her stuff.”

But when Surowiec opened the door of her home outside Port Orchard she quickly found herself in a lot of trouble. Two masked men on the other side of the door.

"One of them threw the door open and the other guy actually pushed me down and kicked me into the dryer and held me down with his foot and told me to look at the ground,” Surowiec said.

The attack left her with a scratch on her face and some bruised ribs. She says the intruders searched her home thoroughly but didn't take a thing.

"The other guy was going through the house saying that whatever they were looking for wasn't here, it was the wrong house, the guy was an idiot but they weren't saying any names,” Surowiec said.

Later the same day there was a similar attack, this time at a home outside Poulsbo. Three masked men armed with a handgun and pepper spray barged inside.

"Pepper spray was deployed by the suspects and all three of the occupants of the house was affected,” Kitsap County Sheriff’s Deputy Scott Wilson said.

The burglars took electronics and left, but police say in crimes like these things can go bad very fast.

"Not only do you have the property crime itself, of burglary, which is bad enough and the trauma that happens to the victims but you're introduced a firearm into the scene and anything can happen when you have a loaded firearm,” Deputy Wilson said.

Because it was dark and the suspects were wearing masks the victims didn’t get a good look at their attackers, so police are asking anyone with information to come forward and they remind all of us, that protecting ourselves is easy; just never, ever open the door until you are certain who is on the other side.