A Pinellas County man is in jail, accused of breaking into a woman's home, threatening her with a hammer and stealing $100 that was stashed in a Bible.
"I'm scared. I'm still scared. Even though he's gone, I'm still scared," Jennifer Wilson, 31, said.
It's an afternoon Wilson wished never happened. It was around 1:00 p.m. She had just come back to her home on 108th Avenue North after taking her son to McDonald's.
While her 8-year-old son stayed outside to play, she walked into her bedroom. Inside, she found a young man rifling through her boyfriends nightstand drawer.
"I said 'Please leave, what are you doing?' He turned around, he had a hammer, and he came after me. He said 'If you don't get the F out of my way, I'm going to hurt you,'" Wilson recalled.
The young man took $100 her boyfriend had stashed in his Bible. She ran out of the house. The man inside took off shortly after.
"I thought my son was going to find me dead!" Wilson said. "My mom lives across the road and he (my son) would have had to go get her to find me dead," she went on.
"That was all the money we had to get my son an Easter basket. I had to borrow $20 from my mom," she explained.
As it turns out, Wilson knew the young man inside of her home.
She said 21-year-old Donald Wheeler is a homeless man who is known to hang out in their neighborhood and she's had problems with him before.
The day prior to the break-in, he was found passed out in their driveway, she said. And only a few hours after he threatened her with that hammer, he was back in their driveway, sitting on a lawn chair. He appeared to be under the influence of drugs, she said.
"He didn't even remember that he came after me with a hammer. He didn't even remember breaking into houses. He didn't remember anything," Wilson explained.
Wilson says her boyfriend confronted Wheeler this time. She says he ran off again and was arrested by deputies a few blocks away.
"I'll do what I have to do to make sure he doesn't come back." Wilson said.
Deputies also found prescription pills on Wheeler. He is now facing charges of armed burglary and possession of Xanax.
