Cold Case Files - I SURVIVED: We Could See This Fire Tornado Devouring Our Pickup Truck

Episode Date: March 8, 2025

15-year-old Sydney is attacked by men who have broken into her family home looking for money. Dena and Roger are trapped when a wildfire engulfs their home before they can evacuate. Jennifer is attacked by her ex-boyfriend when he breaks into her home with a gun.Apartments.com - To find whatever you’re searching for and more visit apartments.com the place to find a place.Progressive: Multitask right now. Quote your car insurance at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Resolve to earn your degree in the new year in the Bay with WGU. With courses available online 24 seven and monthly start dates, WGU offers maximum flexibility so you can focus on your future. Learn more at WGU.edu. Hi, I Survive listeners. I'm Marissa Pinson. And before we get into this week's episode, I just want to remind you that episodes of I Survived as well as the A&E Classic Podcast, Cold Case Files,

City Confidential, and American Justice are all available ad free on the new A&E Crime and Investigation channel on Apple Podcasts and Apple Plus for just $4.99 a month or $39.99 a year. And now onto the show. This episode contains subject matter that may be disturbing to some listeners. Listener discretion is advised. I was laying on the ground and my son was screaming into the phone, he's shooting her, he's killing her. Real people. Even though we were in the pool and the water was freezing,

I was deathly afraid that our hair was going to catch on fire. Who faced death. We could see this fire tornado devouring our pickup truck. Literally, it was just stuck on the truck. And lived to tell how. I'm like, why isn't God helping me? Why is this happening? You know, at 15, I'm probably going to die.

This is I Survived. This is I Survived. It's December 2003 in Gary, Indiana. Sydney is a 15-year-old high school student. Her parents are out for the evening and she is home alone. I had been in a play that evening and my parents attended the performance. I was really tired when it was over, so I told them, you know, I just want to go home and get some rest.

So they dropped me off at home, and they kept going, you know, out to spend some time together. When I finally went to sleep, it was probably about 9 o'clock, and I was really tired, so I fell asleep pretty quickly. When I woke up out of my sleep, it was almost

like an urgent feeling. My heart was racing, and I couldn't figure out why. And I just, I kind of sat there for a minute, and I listened. Something just kept making me feel that, you know, Sydney, something is not right. So I crawl under my bed, and I'm just, you know, I'm scared. I don't know really why. And I picked up the phone.

I called my mom, and it went straight to voicemail. Maybe 30 seconds later, I hear footsteps. By this point, I'm terrified. My heart is racing, and I'm just thinking, okay, maybe it's my parents, but then I would have heard the front door open, so it couldn't be them.

So if it's not them, who is it? The footsteps stop. My bedroom door opens. The light comes on. And I see these red tennis shoes. They're red and white. And he's just walking around the room looking for things and going through my drawers. And I'm just carrying under the bed looking for things and, you know, going through my drawers.

And I'm just carrying under the bed and I'm praying. I see him kneel down and he's at the opposite end of the bed. And immediately I just closed my eyes because I knew, you know, my feet are down and he's going to see me. He grabbed me by my hair and he pulled me from up under the bed. And I'm just, I'm terrified and I'm screaming. And I'm just saying, you know, just please don't hurt me. Just, you know, let me go. And he dragged me out of my room by my hair,

into the hallway in front of my bedroom door. And I hear him say, get something to put over her head. So now I know that there's more than one person there. They put the paper bag over my head, and then a gun is placed to the back of my head. They're like, you know, lady, just give us the money, lady, just give us the money.

So, you know, I hear them calling me lady. I'm thinking, well, maybe if I let them know that I'm just a child, they won't do anything. So I said, you know, I'm only 15, my parents, they have the money, I don't have anything. And they're just like, you know, we don't care, just give us something. I don't know, I don't have any money, I don't know where my parents keep anything. I don't have anything. You know, he's mad. He's yelling.

They're cursing. And he's, you know, if you don't give us the money, we're going to kill you. We're going to kill you. So you need to come up with something. And I just, I didn't know what to do. I just kept praying. And honestly, the one thing that I was wondering was, you know, I didn't know what to do. I just kept praying and honestly, the one thing that I was wondering was,

you know, I'm 15 at the time, I'm like, why isn't God helping me? Why is this happening? You know, at 15, I'm probably gonna die. He was, you know, really mad and he's like, you know, you're playing with me, you know where the money is. He says to the other guy, find something to tie her up with. The other guy went into my dad's office,

which was down the hallway. I could hear him walking. He comes back and he hands him something, and I just hear this noise like he's unrolling tape. And he grabs my arms and they, um, he ties my hands behind my back. He snatches the bag off of my head and they just take the tape and just loop it around my eyes just several times over and over again. They just loop it around my eyes just several times, over and over again. They just loop it around my face.

And he pushed me down on the floor, face down, and he put the gun back to my head, and he's like, you know, I'm tired of playing games. We're gonna take your clothes off. I had on some sweatpants, some socks, a t-shirt, and a sports bra. And he pulls my sweatpants off. Then he pulled my underwear off.

And he took the tape off of my hands. He just kind of ripped it off. And he pulls my shirt, just like, you know, ripped it off, and he pulls my shirt just like, you know, just pulls it over my head, and he's just, you know, tossing me everywhere. I'm laying face down in the hallway, and he just starts, like, you know, grabbing and rubbing all over me, and he's, you know, under and rubbing all over me,

and he's, you know, under my sports bra, and he's touching me, and I just, you know, I'm saying, you know, just please, just take, you know, whatever, whatever you want, just, you know, please just leave me alone. And he's like, no, that's not enough. You didn't give us what we wanted. So he rap raped me.

The thing that I kept thinking about was, my mom's gonna come home, and she's gonna find me naked and dead. And I just kept thinking, you know, I haven't done anything. I haven't even, I haven't had my. I was thinking I haven't even had my first boyfriend, I'm just I haven't even had my sweet 16 and Here's this guy

That's probably gonna kill me. He smelled like like he was just dirty and I could smell, it's like gasoline and marijuana and he's just, he's raping me. When he was done, I can hear him zipping his pants up and I guess he's fixing his clothes and he's not saying anything. I didn't say anything.

I'm just, you know, just laying there. I thought to myself, you know, if I can just get him away for even a few minutes, maybe I can run, maybe I can, you know, get out of here. I'm right by the stairs. I said to him, you know, I know where some money is. I know where, you know, there's a few dollars. And he said, where is it at?

And I said, it's in my room. He got up, and as soon as he walked down the hallway, as soon as I heard him, you know, get far enough away, I kind of, I wriggled my hands out of the tape, and I stood up. And as soon as I stood up, I tried to pull the tape down off of my eyes. And I looked down, and the other guy's at the bottom of the stairs.

And he's pointing the gun at me. And he didn't say anything, and I didn't say anything. It was just like, for that moment, we were just, you know, looking in each other's eyes. And he shot. He shot twice. I took off running. Um, I ran into my parents' bedroom.

I jumped over the bed, and I opened the balcony door as fast as I could. And it's far down. I'm looking at it and I was just sure that, you know, I was probably going to hurt myself. The balcony was 12 feet above the ground. Sydney was unaware she had been shot through the kneecap. I scooted, you know, kind of slid down to the edge. I took a breath and I jumped.

As soon as I jumped and hit the ground, I just got up and ran. There are cars going down the street, and nobody stops, nobody comes out the house. There's nothing. And the guy finally catches up with me about four or five houses down in the yard of one of my other childhood friends' grandmothers.

It was in front of her house. He tackles me to the ground. So I'm just, I'm fighting. I'm scratching, I'm clonging, I'm punching, I'm, you know, pulling away from him. I'm just trying everything I can to get away from him. And then he gets me kind of by my neck, and he's grabbing me. And I see the other guy coming, running towards us. And I know he has the gun.

And he says, take her in the alley. Get her in the alley. If they get me in the alley, they're going to shoot me. They wanted to take me in the alley so they could shoot me. And so I'm just, I'm screaming her name. And I hear the window open. And she says, Sydney, is that you? And I'm just, yes, just help me.

And I'm just, you know, I'm screaming her name. And as soon as they heard her, they dropped me. And they ran around the side of the house into the alley, and they were gone. I just got up, and I'm just, I'm banging on the door because I'm scared. You know, what if, what if they come back? And finally, she opened the door,

and I just collapsed on the ground. And that's when I cried. I finally started crying. And she's just, you know, what's wrong? Where are your clothes at? And she's hysterical. I'm crying. I know that, you know, I probably

wasn't saying anything that made sense, because I just want her to close the door and lock it. And she called the police. I was shot in my knee. It entered through the side of my leg, and it exited through the top of my knee cap. Once, you know, I realized what it was, the first thing that I thought and even the officer said, you know, how did you jump and get all the way down here after you had been shot? How did you

even do that? Sydney's attackers were never caught. The investigation is ongoing. If the bullet had exited just a few inches over, my knee would have been shattered and there would have been no way I could have, you know, ran out of my, I mean, ran into my parents' bedroom, much less jump off a balcony. So I probably wouldn't have made it. I think that I survived because I fought. I was too young to die and to not live my life. So I fought and I survived.

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It's October 2007 in Escondido, California. Dina and Roger's home overlooks San Pasqual Valley. It was on a ridge top. It had a 340 degree view. It was absolutely beautiful. We loved it. It was a second marriage for both of us, and it was our dream home.

Our house was on a private road that you had to go through in Avocado Grove to get to, and there were five homes on this ridge top. And we could not see our neighbors. They were that far apart. One Sunday afternoon, Dina and Roger and we could not see our neighbors. They were that far apart. One Sunday afternoon, Deena and Roger saw distant smoke. As we looked out, the Santa Annas were starting,

we looked out way in the distance to the east, we could see smoke. And that always sets up the alarm bells. And so we checked, and there was a fire that started way east of Ramona. Santa Annas are the hot desert winds that drive California's wildfires. When the Santa Ana winds come along, it is so dry.

Everything, it's just like a tinderbox. Over the years, we've had fire scares several different times. There was a pretty good fire right next to our home in 97. An arsonist had started a fire down on Bandy Canyon, which was below us. Alarmed at the possibility of another wildfire, the couple began monitoring news reports. The TVs were turned on to two different stations

and the radials were turned on to two different stations. And we started watching everything. We had evacuated in the past. We had a system all set up ready to, because we had escape plans, we had emergency procedures. If our areas were appearing on those maps or if we got a 911 call, we were gone. We weren't going to stick around. And we were in the chairs and we were dozing off and we finally said, you know, this is ridiculous. The fire is still 20, 30 miles, 30 miles away. We might as well get some sleep. It was about midnight, I think. And so we

went to bed and we laid down. I had to get up to go to the bathroom about one o'clock in the morning. Standing in our bedroom, I looked down into the valley and the electric line that came across the valley, across this old dirt road, it had disconnected from one telephone pole, stayed connected to the other telephone pole, and

was like a cowboy whip, whipping out into the shrub, and it was sparking, and it was flipping through the shrub and the grass, and the fire started. I woke Dina up and showed her the fire down below in the valley, and I said, we're leaving, and we're not sticking around. The firemen aren't gonna get to that. I threw on some clothes and just grabbing whatever I could. I grabbed a suitcase and threw a few other things into it. And then we ran downstairs to the door to the garage

and I had my hand on the handle to the garage door and the electricity went out. And it was the middle of the night. I'm not sure where my cell phone was. The phone was plugged into the wall, but there's no power, so the phone's not going to work. The alarm started going off. It just happened so fast at that point in time. The sparks were flying all around both sides of the house already.

The couple were now totally isolated with no phone or power. The fire just north of us down in the valley was now coming up the hill. And it was 30 to 40 foot wall of flame. The fire north of us and the fire east of us got to our home almost simultaneously. Dina says, well, we gotta leave. I says, no, no, sweetheart, we can't leave. I said, that fire's coming too fast. We'll never get out of the grove and onto the road,

not here, we're gonna have to stay here. It was just bright as daylight outside and the flames were just huge. There was fire everywhere, there was nowhere, we couldn't get to the car. The smoke alarm was going off and it was wailing. And so we're trying to decide, okay, well, what's our next game plan? The garage was sealed better than the rest of the house. So that's why we went there instead of staying in the house itself. It seemed

to be more airtight. We took a bunch of rags, soaked them with water, and laid on the floor of the garage, right in front of the car, waiting for the firestorm to pass over. So we were right next to each other, and the smoke just kept getting thicker and thicker and thicker in the garage, and it became smelling toxic. You could start to smell a chemical smell. And I said, Raj, if we don't leave now,

we're going to die of asphyxiation in here because this smoke is going to kill us. And Dina says, you're going to open the garage door? And I said, no. And she said, why? I said, backdraft. I said, we have terrible winds out there with horrible fire. I open that door, it's going to suck all the air out, and the fire's just going to come swishing into our garage,

and we're going to die. We had this escape plan for years, hoping I'd never have to execute it. I knew that if we could get to the pool, we might survive. If we did not get to the pool, I knew it was over. The only escape valve we had was to go back into the house across the kitchen floor. I'm thinking, OK, Lord, help me get Dina to the pool. I'll take it from there.

When we stepped back into the house from the kitchen, it was solid black soup. It was terrible smelling. And we could hear the snap crackle of things burning someplace. But you couldn't see anything and you could not take a deep breath. It was just gross, gross air. I'm just thinking, oh, let me get a few more feet, a few more feet, a few more feet. And then we hit the cement of the family room

and stepped outside onto the deck. The pool was a few yards from the deck. We raced down, we ran along the side of the house and got into the shallow end of the pool, jumped into the pool. We were in the shallow end of the pool for five or 10 minutes. And my lovely wife said, this is not a very safe place to be because when

the house falls down it will fall on us. So we went to the farthest portion of the pool away from the house which was the deep end and that gave us some protection from the flames that were coming over our heads basically. You're watching all this in front of you, and it seems so surreal. We could see this fire tornado devouring our pickup truck. It literally was just stuck on the truck. And we're sitting there, and I mean, I'm 50 years old. Roger's 60.

We're watching 50 and 60 years of your entire life. Your travels, your kids' pictures, your everything that you ever had is burning before your eyes and there's nothing you can do. There's nothing you can do. The water from our chin down was 58, 59 degrees. Above us was in the hundreds. I was deathly afraid that our hair was going to catch on fire. And even though we were in the pool and the water was freezing,

that we were still going to catch on fire. So I kept looking at Roger and telling him, you've got to wet your hair. Wet your head down again. The pool was filling up with stuff. First several inches on the pool was just garbage. So we take the water, take the rags, get them wet, and put them on our head and saturate our hair,

and then put the wet rag in front of us to breathe. Probably half hour after we got in the pool, pieces of my neighbor's house came flying by. Chris and Vicki lived 1,000 yards from us. And part of the escape plan for everybody on the hill is that if the road from our houses down to the main road ever got blocked or on fire, everybody was supposed to get to our pool.

Earlier that night, when I was talking with Vicki on Sunday evening, I reminded her, if we can't get out, you'll get here. And she says, oh, we'll be there. The wind was howling. It was noisy. The fire was noisy. So we didn't talk a whole lot.

We just huddled together. But we, where's Chris and Vicki? Why aren't they here? It was just unbelievable to sit there and watch and see. It was like, oh, my god, are you seeing what I'm seeing? My God, Dina, look at that. That's a refrigerator. I said, our brand new refrigerator is melting.

And we were watching the bottles of wine explode. And I told Dina, I said, you know, it's one thing to have your refrigerator melt. I said, but I'm really upset. That's good wine. It's gone. We were in the pool for probably three, three and a half hours. It was still very much in flames, burning,

but the bulk of the house was, it was down. It was, a three story house was about two feet tall. The 58 degree water was dangerously cold. If we got really hot, we'd just dip in the water because it was really cold. But after about three hours, the coldness of the water started giving me terrible cramps. We were both shivering.

And I got really scared because I thought with shivering that we were going to be hypothermic, that we were going to freeze hypothermic, that we were going to freeze to death in the pool before we could get out. There was no choice but to get out of the pool. Portions of the eaves had fallen into the pool, so we pushed them out of the way to get out of the pool and we're laying on the cement and cement felt really good because it was hot and we were freezing. And I remember laying there looking up at the palm tree right

above my head and the palm tree right above my head. The palm tree was on fire. It was still so dark and so smoky, you couldn't see anything. We laid there long enough that the light had come up, the sun had come up. And then the winds stopped. They just literally stopped.

And the blue sky was up above, and there was smoke. And Dina grabbed my hand and led me down the hill, because my eyes were so swollen with debris in them. And we're walking down the hill, and railroad ties are on fire. Trees are on fire. It was eerie. There were no helicopters. There were no policemen. There were no fire trucks. There were no helicopters. There were no policemen.

There were no fire trucks. There were no firemen. There were no people sounds. There was nothing but the sound of quiet and fires still burning. I don't even think it was three minutes later I hear the sound of a car coming. And I just, I went, oh my God.

This car pulls up and it was like an off-road vehicle kind of car and it was a man and his son. I could tell from the expression on his face that they were absolutely in shock that they had encountered anybody and then to look like what we looked like. We were black from head to toe. We were black.

My hair was still in a ponytail, but it was dried out and it was all matted and filled with debris from the fire and chunks of soot. My eyes were bright red. There was no white to my eyes whatsoever. The man and his son that picked us up on the road were kind enough to take us to their home and give us a change of clothes and a shower. And throughout that, during that process, we discovered that his wife worked with our daughter and had her number on the cell phone, so we were able to contact our kids and let them know we were safe.

Their neighbors, Chris and Vicki, perished in the fire. We got a call from Vicki's brother, who said that the investigative teams had gone back up there again and that they had found them in their garage. That they didn't make it. Sort of puts the preciousness of life really high on your priority list. My neighbors died. We didn't. They're a thousand yards away. They didn't get to the pool. We got to the pool. We survived. The fires incinerated an area the size of New York City.

Two people died and over 1,000 homes were destroyed. Dina and Roger are rebuilding their home. We loved our house. It's gonna be similar, just kind of reconfigure the rooms a little bit and no wood decks, but the pool stays. The pool stays. I lost everything, absolutely everything I ever owned. That's okay. That's okay. I gave up everything so I keep my wife. I Survived is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Shifting a little money here, a little there, and hoping it all works out? Well, with the Name Your Price tool from Progressive, you can be a better

budgeter and potentially lower your insurance bill too. You tell Progressive what you want to pay for car insurance and they'll help you find options within your budget. Try it today at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates, price and coverage match limited by state law law not available in all states. It's June 2007 in East Marlboro, Pennsylvania. Jennifer is a single mom who lives with her eight-year-old son, Matt. She has recently ended her relationship with Kenny. Kenny started off being a great person. He was very funny, very outgoing. He was always happy, very carefree, didn't have a lot of money and didn't care.

He was just the type of person that you liked being around. My son needed that. He needed a male role model. And then that slowly changed. As we started becoming closer, he started becoming more possessive. He was angry. We would argue a lot. I had pretty much told him, that's it, we're done.

I don't really want to see you anymore. We can still be friends, but we're not having any kind of relationship. I stopped taking his phone calls and thought, I really need to do this. I even called my friends at work and said, well, I finally did it. I finally got him out of my life. Then I met somebody. My parents set me up on this blind date.

We hit it off. We didn't stop talking the entire evening, and it was just, it was great. So I thought that this was really going somewhere. I thought this could be somebody that I've been looking for. Kenny kept calling Jennifer. That's when he started on, who is this guy you're seeing? What's his name?

Started asking a whole bunch of questions. I don't know why we can't work this out. Why are you doing this? I don't understand. Just on and on and on. And he just wouldn't let up. At that point, I just said to him, look, I don't ever want to see you again. And I don't ever want to speak to you again. And I hung up the phone.

After spending the day with friends, Jennifer returned home. I had put my son to bed and I was getting ready to get in the shower. And I heard my door downstairs open. And then I heard this barreling up the shower, and I heard my door downstairs open. And then I heard this barreling up the stairs, like almost like a, like just stomping. And my, I just got a sick feeling. I turned to look down the hallway, and Kenny was standing in the middle of the hallway,

asking me where my boyfriend was. I said to him, my son is sleeping. Let's take this downstairs. So I walked down the stairs, and he followed right behind me down the stairs. Kenny and I just argued back and forth. At that point, my son came downstairs. I turned and looked at Matt, and then I looked back at Kenny.

And when I looked back at Kenny, he had pulled a gun out and was pointing it at me. I was pretty frightened because I'd never expected a gun. I never expected him to do anything like that. And my son immediately started crying and saying, what are you doing? I don't want my mom to die. And it just started, it just escalated from there. He didn't really respond to Matt.

He was directing his conversation to me. He just kept saying to me, you need to get him out of the house. And I kept insisting no. He told me to call my parents to come and get my son. And I said, why? And he said, because I'm going to kill you, and then I'm going to shoot myself.

And I don't want him here for that. And all of a sudden, I heard talking. And I actually thought it was crying. And then I asked permission to go upstairs and check on him. I said, I think he's crying. He's really upset. He just needs to be reassured. Is it OK if I go upstairs and check on him? So I started going up the stairs.

And he followed right behind me with the gun pointed at my back. Jennifer found Matt in his bedroom, calling 911. I've never showed my son how to use the phone, so I couldn't even comprehend that he actually knew to pick up the phone and call 911. He said, my mom is being threatened. There's a man with a gun threatening her. You need to get somebody here.

At that point, Kenny's phone rang. While he was distracted with that phone call, I thought that I would be able to get myself into Matt's room and get the door shut. So as I was shutting the door, that's when he shot me through the door. I'm screaming. My son's screaming.

He's killing her. He's shooting her now. And it was just chaos. And then I fell to the floor. Kenny opened the door completely and looked right at my son and said, I'll talk to 911 now. And I said, give him the phone. Matt gave him the phone.

And he got on the phone with 911 and said, I just put a bullet in her leg. I'm going to kill her and then I'm going to kill myself. After Kenny shot me and I was laying on the ground and my son was screaming into the phone, he's shooting her, he's killing her, all I just felt was pain, just excruciating pain and all I could do was scream, which I think made it worse for my son because he thought I was dying. As Kenny was talking with 911, his cell phone rang again. It was his cousin, so he decided he was going to pick up

that phone and have a conversation. It was almost like he was bragging. I put a bullet in her leg. She's cheated on me for the last time. I can remember screaming at him, I never cheated on you. We're not dating. I have a bullet in my leg, and I'm still yelling at him that we're not in a relationship.

When he shot me and I was laying on the floor, I was angry because my eight-year-old had been through so much in his lifetime already that he didn't need any more trauma in his life. So I thought about that and how this was going to affect him. I thought about, how am I going to get this guy out of my house now? Now I'm shot.

Now I can't move. How am I going to get out of here? I'm laying there thinking, why aren't the police here? Why aren't they coming in? Why aren't they trying to help me? Why aren't they trying to get my son out here? Jennifer was unaware that police had the house surrounded. After a three hour siege, negotiators persuaded Kenny to give himself up.

I think I realized when it was over when he started talking to the negotiator about what window he needed to go to and wanted the weapons out of the house before he actually walked out. And that's when I realized things were coming to an end. He's getting ready to go to a window and dump the weapon. Once the weapons gone, then I knew that I was okay. The SWAT team came into the house and they were screaming, clear, clear. It was just like this whirlwind of people storming into my house. An ambulance was waiting to rush Jennifer to the hospital. The bullet just annihilated the whole upper part of my leg. It went in the upper part of my leg and lodged behind my knee.

So the entire upper part of my leg, all the nerve, all the tissue, all the muscles gone. I survived because of my son. He's my hero. I don't think that I would be alive if it wasn't for what he did for me. He's what kept me together during the whole time I was laying on that floor. And he's what kept me going after.

It's been for him, he's my little hero. Oh. Oh. Are you looking for your next case? Little hero. Be sure to subscribe to our channel for more videos like this.