Background: A road in Mountain Park in Roswell, Georgia, where police searched for James Raborn after a bank robbery (screengrab via WSB). Inset: James Raborn (Roswell Police Dept. via WSB).
A Georgia woman made an unsettling discovery after being woken up by a noise in her house in the night: a suspected bank robber, apparently asleep in her husband’s office.
James Raborn, 27, was arrested last week for the armed robbery of a bank in Roswell, a city around 20 miles north of Atlanta, the Roswell Police Department announced on Facebook. He is alleged to have passed a note to a bank worker on Monday, Jan. 22, demanding money and threatening that he had a gun — although police note that no gun was shown at the time. By the time 911 was called, some 10 minutes later, the robbery suspect had fled the scene.
That set off a dayslong search for the alleged robber. His truck is believed to have been spotted the next day, but the driver gave chase, running off after ditching the car in Mountain Park, a heavily wooded community with a population of around 550 around six miles northwest of Roswell. A female who was a passenger in the vehicle was taken into custody.
“[A] large number of police resources flooded the Mountain Park area in a search for Raborn, including several K9 and drone teams, as well as officers” from multiple nearby jurisdictions and the Georgia State Patrol, the statement from Roswell police said.
On Wednesday, Jan. 24, police say detectives “received the first cell phone data for Raborn since he had fled, indicating that his phone had become active in the 300 block of Mountain Park Rd. around 8:00pm.”
“Detectives immediately returned to the area of the cell phone ping, and found an outbuilding on a nearby property with evidence that someone had recently been inside,” Roswell police said. “Detectives made contact with the homeowner, and as she came to the door to meet them, she saw Raborn lying on the floor of a spare bedroom. The homeowner immediately exited and allowed officers inside, who took Raborn into custody without incident.”
That homeowner, Gwynne Ketcham, told Atlanta ABC affiliate WSB that she had heard a noise in her house on Wednesday night after she had gone to bed. Thinking it might have been her cats, she checked her husband’s office — but the door was blocked.
“I reached in and turned on the light and saw his legs, turned off the light and left,” Ketcham told the station. “Something you never expect to see in your house.”
According to WSB, Roswell police believe that Raborn broke into Ketcham’s home through a window while she was out of the house early Wednesday.
“I was in the house for five hours while he was here,” she said. Ketcham also told the station that she didn’t believe Raborn was there to hurt her, and that he was either asleep or pretending to be when she discovered him.
Raborn has been charged with armed robbery, criminal trespass, and multiple traffic offenses from the chase, WSB reported.
Police note that the woman found in Raborn’s car, 29-year-old Emily Browning, was a “knowing participant” in the bank robbery and has since been charged as well.
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