An elderly woman was bound while six men ransacked her Potomac home last week.
Police are describing the robbery as a home invasion, which occurred on the 13800 block of Longacres Preserves Court in Potomac.
At approximately 1:40 p.m. on Sept. 26, a 72-year-old woman, expecting a cleaning crew, answered the doorbell at her front door.
As she opened the door, six suspects, one armed with a handgun, forced their way in, say Montgomery County Police.
The suspects then bound the victim and went throughout the home. It is not known what was taken at this time. The cleaning crew found the victim a short time later, and she called the police.
The victim suffered bruising from being bound, but she was not taken for medical treatment.
The suspects were described as Asian males, 20-30 years of age, 5-feet-2 to 5-feet-3 inches, 120-130 pounds, all with short, dark hair.
One suspect was described as wearing a dark t-shirt and pants, another was described as wearing a white t-shirt with red and blue stripes. They spoke to the victim in Mandarin Chinese.
This marks at least the third home invasion perpetrated by Asian males in the past five months in Potomac. The others were on May 10 in the 9900 block of Scotch Broom Court and July 5 in the 8700 block of Camille Drive.
Other home invasion robberies have occurred in the past 12 months, and police are currently analyzing the them for frequency and other factors.
“There certainly are common denominators,” said John Fitzgerald, spokesperson for the Montgomery County Police Department. “Whether the intruders are the same or are with affiliated groups, we don’t know.”
Fitzgerald said this is a countywide problem and that Asian residents seem to be targeted. “There seems to be some deliberate target,” he said.
The prime targets seem to be successful members of the Asian community, he said. “These particular crimes seem to be targeting Asian victims,” he said.
“They probably know of the family through secondary or tertiary contact,” said Michael Lin, a Potomac resident who is president of the Asian American Political Alliance.
Lin said that sometimes the victims are known “to have a substantial amount of cash or valuables on display.”
Fitzgerald stressed that police always recommend that all residents minimize the amount of valuables they keep at home, not only for protection from robberies, but also in case of fires or other catastrophes.
The fact that the attackers were speaking Mandarin Chinese may be a clue. “Perhaps they are a more recent infusion,” Lin said, noting that it was just speculation.
The attackers in the Camille Drive incident also spoke Chinese, according to Montgomery County Police. It is not known which language was spoken at Scotch Broom Court.
Many immigrant groups stop speaking their mother tongue soon after coming to the country. “They are less likely to be second generation,” Lin said.
He likened the situation to one in New York several years ago when youth gangs would attack other Asians of the same ethnicity as themselves, sometimes because the attackers’ own language skills were limited.
“It probably has something to do with their own comfort level,” Lin said.