Teen Uses Text Messages To Foil Burglars

Lauren Durnbaugh, 13, of Lithopolis, Ohio did not attend school last Tuesday but she did receive an A+ in a real life test. She was home alone when she heard the sounds of someone breaking into her house through an unlocked rear door. The teenager went to her bedroom and hid under the covers while the intruders were ransacking the rest of the house.

“I ran into my room and got under the covers and was hiding,” Durnbaugh said. “I didn’t know what to think and I couldn’t breathe. I was scared.

What she did there, under the covers, not only saved the house from being robbed but also led to the arrest of the two persons responsible for the break-in….. she sent text messages to her mother at work telling her what was going on.

“OMG. They’re in the house. I think we’re being robbed,” Durnbaugh said in a text message to her mother, Margo Roby, 53, who was working at a car dealership about 15 minutes away.

In the meantime, the intruders were going through all the rooms in the house and even searched the teen’s bedroom and sat on her bed. They had no clue that Lauren was there hiding under the covers.

After receiving the text messages from her daughter, Margo Roby raced home while calling 911. When she arrived at the house she saw the burglars’ car parked in her driveway. She rammed the car with her own vehicle. This got the attention of one of the intruders, later identified as Jenna Marie Burns, who came out of the house. The two women began to wrestle just as the sheriff’s deputies and the Lithopolis police chief arrived. They arrested both Jenna and her companion, Jeremiah Lee Fyffe.

Jewelry, a laptop computer, a digital camera and a tool box were among items the intruders had set outside apparently to be carried away, Sheriff Dave Phalen said.

Margo then rushed into the house in search of her daughter.

“I ran in to get my daughter. She was just shaking like a leaf,” Roby said. “After we cried, she said, ‘Wow, I can’t believe I did that,'” Roby said.

Jenna Marie Burns, 20, of Orient, and Jeremiah Lee Fyffe, 26, of Lockbourne, were arrested and charged with burglary. Burns also was charged with robbery. Both remained in a county jail Wednesday on $100,000 bond.

Burns’ mother, Virginia Burns, said her daughter is only guilty of “bad association.”

“I think that my daughter has made the wrong choice in people, and now she’s going to pay the price for that association,” she said. “I believe in my daughter. She is a goodhearted individual. But she has made a bad decision and she’ll pay the price for it.”

Margo Roby said she blamed herself for failing to lock the door when she left for work. But she’s proud of how her daughter handled herself. If convicted, Burns faces a maximum sentence of 16 years in prison; Fyffe faces a maximum of eight years.