Vacant Joyner family home ransacked, defiled
By DON FLETCHER
News Staff Writer
An Atmore woman whose unoccupied family home was vandalized and defiled by individuals who also stole two air conditioning units, several taxidermied animals and who knows what else, said the experience has been harrowing for her and her mother.
“Our peace of mind was taken, and that’s a terrible feeling,” said Sarah Frances Thompson, who has lived in the house as an adult and whose mother, Julia Gibbs, grew up in the house. “That’s what’s worst.”
The two are trying to deal with the situation, especially since there had been no previous break-ins at the house, which has been in the Joyner family for decades but is currently unoccupied, though it still has water and electricity.
“We were shocked, especially when we went through the first time, that after all this time, this would happen,” Sarah Frances said. “We couldn’t grasp the whole thing. It just doesn’t make any sense. I don’t think you could ever make it make sense.”
Julia Gibbs discovered the break-in when she was unable to push the front door open. She called her daughter, who arrived within minutes, and Atmore police arrived about a minute later.
The burglars, who apparently pulled an inflatable yard display into the house and used it as a light while they searched, took the air conditioning units from two windows, as well as a collection of professionally stuffed animals that included the head of a mouflon (a wild sheep native to an area stretching from Cyprus to Iran).
The taxidermy work had belonged to Jeff Ward, Sarah Frances’ father, giving them strong sentimental value.
“They took just odd things,” Sarah Frances said. “They pilfered and went through everything. They pulled full crates out of the closets and dumped them all over the place. You couldn’t even see the floor in the living room, there was so much stuff.
“They took most of the animals that Daddy had gotten stuffed, and that’s something he had left us. That’s a little bit harder to deal with than missing blankets or other things like that. They weren’t able to get all of them because some were hung too high, so at least we still have some of them.”
It was easy for the two to overlook some details at first, especially after they discovered that one of the burglars had defecated on the floor of one room.
“When you walk in and see that, you don’t really notice if an air conditioner or anything else is missing,” Sarah Frances said. “There was electricity and water in the house; the person could have gone to the bathroom.”
Sarah Frances and her mother are still discovering items that are missing, slowing the police investigation a bit.
“There are a lot of things we still have to report,” she explained as she went through the house trying to determine what was taken. “The police have been vigilant, but we haven’t given them a complete list of what’s missing yet. I don’t know if we’ll ever know everything that was stolen.”
City police had not responded by Tuesday’s press deadline to a request for basic information on the investigation.
Note: Atmore News did not publish the location of the house in order to help prevent more break-ins.