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| Ex-US Marine Battle Armed Robbers |
1/5/2007 |
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Connecticut Trooper Prevails In Ferocious Fight To Defend Family In Ghana
Trooper Scott Spraggins opened his eyes to the African darkness, awakened by a strange scraping noise. It was different from the crickets and the whir of central air conditioning in the gated, elegant home where he and his family had been staying during their trip this month to Ghana.
He padded barefoot from the bedroom down a darkened hallway and opened a door that led to the living room. He saw three sets of eyes glaring at him. He also caught the outline of a shotgun in the hands of one of the intruders.
Spraggins, a former U.S. Marine, and his wife, Angelica, a Ghanaian national, said they had been warned about a series of robberies in the suburbs of Accra, the capital where they were visiting her relatives.
They were told the bandits would sometimes just take valuables, but frequently would shoot the men and rape the women before leaving with their booty.
Spraggins wasn''t about to gamble early that morning of Dec. 21, not when his wife, his mother, and his two daughters, Sophia, 5, and Sabrina, 15 months, were sleeping down the hall.
"I knew I was going to be the last one standing," Spraggins, 35, said.
Scott and Angelica Spraggins, 39, and his mother, Lyla Mills, 63, now back home in Newtown, recalled how they fought with the three armed intruders. Scott Spraggins slashed one of the bandits in the abdomen and blinded another in one eye.
The family members, after being treated for cuts, head injuries and bite wounds at a military hospital in Ghana, returned to Connecticut on Christmas Eve.
Spraggins, who has been a trooper for six years and works at Troop A in Southbury, said his training as a state trooper and Marine saved him and his family.
As the intruder leveled the shotgun, Spraggins'' survival instinct took over. He hurled his stocky 5-foot-10, 220-pound frame at the man and grabbed the barrel of the shotgun before the man could get off a shot. He threw the gun into the darkened living room. It clanged on the tile floor.
"Shoot him! Shoot him!" he heard the intruder with the shotgun yell to one of the other men.
Spraggins turned his attention to the other man, who was removing a revolver from his waistband. He ran into the intruder with all his force. The two other intruders began striking Spraggins in the head and body with pieces of furniture, splitting his head open.
Blood began spurting from his head, turning the white tile floor red, and making it slippery, and causing the men to fall as they fought.
That''s the scene Angelica Spraggins said she walked into when she was awakened by banging furniture. "What are you doing? Leave us alone!" she began screaming when she saw the men in the living room.
"I have no training whatsoever. I am like the weakest person on earth," she said. "But I want to protect my husband." Spraggins'' mother also ran out of her room. She pushed a bamboo chair at the intruders. It broke into pieces, and she began striking them with pieces of furniture. The intruders struck her in the head, she said, and even bit her on the arm.
"I saw stars [when she was struck], but I said `I can''t go down,''" said Mills, a youthful grandmother, who takes care of her grandchildren when her son and daughter-in-law are working. She grabbed a can of Lysol and sprayed it in the face of one of the intruders.
Scott Spraggins yelled to his wife to get his knife, the one he carries on the job to cut car crash victims out of their seat belts. She ran to the kitchen instead and handed him a steak knife.
Spraggins jammed the knife through the eye of the man who had the pistol and then stabbed him in the abdomen, breaking the blade of the flimsy knife. The man ran, screaming in agony. "Scott was exhausted. By this time, the baby was crying," Mills said.
Mills kept the lights off so the baby would not see the blood, and gave her a bottle in the dark, which settled her. Meanwhile, Angelica Spraggins rushed to the window, where the bars had been cut, and tried to get out to get help, but one of the men chased her and pulled her back by her legs. She kicked him off and ran to the gate, where she banged the padlock and screaming for help to a security guard at a compound across the street.
She ran back inside and saw her husband back on the floor tussling over the shotgun, which had been picked up again by an intruder. Scott Spraggins grabbed the shotgun and jammed it by loading two shells into the chamber. The intruder grabbed the weapon and bashed Spraggins in the head with it. The impact fractured his skull.
Spraggins yelled to his wife to get his work knife in the bedroom. With the sturdy, 4?-inch blade, Spraggins slashed the intruder in the abdomen, severely wounding him. The third intruder ran away in the chaos.
When they turned the lights on in the living room, the floor was covered with blood, they said. Scott and Angelica Spraggins and Mills were bleeding profusely from head wounds.
The wounded intruder said he was sent by someone who worked on the swimming pool at the house, owned by friends of the Spragginses who were on vacation in Spain. Spraggins said he was told the man died later at a hospital, where he had been taken by police.
After the attempted robbery, Angelica Spraggins said, she called her cousin, who picked up a police officer and brought him to the house. Scott Spraggins, who was the most seriously injured, and his mother were rushed to a nearby military hospital.
Angelica Spraggins and another relative who came to the scene grabbed the girls and left the house with all their belongings. They had planned to visit the Gold Coast castles the next morning, but never made it. At the hospital, Mills'' and Angelica Spraggins'' wounds were stitched up and they were able to stay with relatives. Scott Spraggins, who had a skull fracture near his eye, a concussion, and dozens of stitches across his head had to stay for two days.
There are police stations throughout Ghana, a West African country about the size of Oregon. But even in Accra, a city of about 2 million, not all of the officers have cars and often have to be picked up by the victims who report an incident. When Angelica Spraggins grew up there, it was safe, she said. But recently, newspapers in Ghana have reported frequent attacks by robbers, particularly in suburbs of larger cities, like the area where the Spragginses were staying.
Her father and many other relatives still live in Ghana, but the Spragginses had not been back since their daughter was born 15 months ago. Angelica Spraggins met her husband in Russia where she was studying and he was deployed with the Marines. She moved to the United States in 1994 and works for the World Health Organization in New York.
Simon Hankinson, a deputy consul with the U.S. Embassy in Ghana, said they received a call from the Spraggins family right after the incident.
"They had a really rough time. It was a terrible fight," said Hankinson, who had heard stories of home invasions, but no others involving American citizens. Ghanaian police had at least one of the robbers in custody, he said. Spraggins was not charged in the incident.
On the 11-hour non-stop flight on Dec. 24 back to the United States, Scott Spraggins passed out twice. When they landed at JFK International Airport in New York, Connecticut State Police Capt. Joseph Davis was waiting and helped the Spraggins family through Customs.
Six other Connecticut troopers, friends of Scott Spraggins, were waiting after they went through Customs. The Spragginses got a police escort to Danbury Hospital, where they all received further treatment, including tetanus shots and anti-viral medications to fight off diseases, including AIDS, they may have contracted from the vicious bite wounds.
"We are thankful that he and his family are safe," Public Safety Commissioner Leonard C. Boyle said. "We are enormously proud of him for the way he defended his family."
In their comfortable raised ranch, Scott Spraggins still suffers headaches from his wounds and gets flashbacks. "He is my hero," his wife said. "I really appreciate my husband''s training and strength. We didn''t want them to get to the kids."
Tracy Gordon Fox at tfox@courant.comThis email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it
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