PENTICTON - Penticton residents Michael Paseska and Sarah Edwards are still terrified, two days after they were the victims of an armed home invasion at their Winnipeg Street home.

Masked assailants woke the pair at gunpoint around 11 a.m. Wednesday, Oct. 2, before eventually fleeing the house and precipitating a police standoff at a Maple Street condominium that afternoon.

Paseska said he and Edwards were awakened by a masked man — known to Paseska — holding a gun.

“He kept yelling, ‘where’s your money, where’s the girl’s stuff?’ I told him, 'I don’t know which stuff you want, take anything you want, just don’t kill me,'” Paseska told iNFOnews.ca today, Oct. 4, as he and Edwards recalled the ordeal.

Paseska said he started to stand up to get out of bed when the man took a shot.

“I thought it hit me in the head,” he said.

Edwards rolled off the bed and covered herself with a blanket, trying to hide. She eventually made it to the closet.

“I was saying, ‘she’s pregnant, don’t kill her,’ and they laid off her after that,” Paseska said.

Three or four other men entered the house along with the man holding the gun. They began carrying things away while the gunman continued yelling for money and the ‘girl’s stuff.’

When the man began shouting for the others to gag the two, Paseska began screaming for help as loud as he could to alert his tenant upstairs. At that moment he noticed his wallet, so far undetected, on the floor.

As he moved to conceal it, the man fell on top of him onto the bed, where he smashed Paseska on the back of the head with the gun.

It went off and a bullet hit Paseka’s sauna in another room but not before grazing his forehead.

“I could feel a ringing in my head and blood dripping down both sides of me,” he said.

“There was a pool of blood around his neck,” Edwards added.

“I just stood on the bed, naked and said, ‘go ahead and kill me then.’ He didn’t, just kept holding the gun and telling me to lay down,” Paseska said.

He stood up and was told to get down on the floor, where he was again able to grab his wallet. He was then able to flip the lock on the bedroom’s sliding glass door, where he got out and started screaming "I’m going to kill you" to distract them from Edwards.

Paseska says the invaders began to retreat to a pair of vehicles on Winnipeg Street. He followed them out and tried to stop them by breaking the window and broke his hand instead.

The suspects drove away and Paseska went back inside his house to find Edwards and call the police.

Paseska was taken to hospital where he was treated for a broken hand, a bullet graze on his face, a laceration to the back of his scalp and a broken bone in his foot suffered when he ran after the two vehicles.

He believes the men targeted him after a tenant was evicted for not having any rent money.

“She went crying to them. She was staying at the house with that guy, the big tall six-foot-eight guy that had the gun. I had already received a message from a friend that she told her that big tall guy was coming to get me,” he said.

“We only found out after the fact that it was her who ordered the attack. That’s what we believe,” Edwards said.

Paseska said five or six guys were involved, plus the drivers, all of whom were wearing red bandannas.

The men took his television, guitars, microphones, a Playstation and other items, carrying them across the street in broad daylight.

“There are still guys at large, these guys are only being charged with home invasion and assault with a deadly weapon, when in my eyes I have been shot at, with a gun - she’s pregnant, she was shot at, we were both told we were going to be killed," he says.

“We think it should be attempted murder,” Edwards says. She says the only reason they weren’t killed was because the men were drunk.

“They were drinking and smoking and firing off a gun at us and luckily missing,” Paseska said.

"We know them and have been told about them by kicking out other people involved in the drug scene, and every time we kick someone out, they say big Joe, he’s coming for you,” he said.

The two say sleep has been difficult since the ordeal.

“We were told victim services was going to talk to us, but no one has called. We just feel we’ve been left here," Edwards said.

"We’re just sitting here alone, just anything could happen at any moment, so it doesn’t feel too good on our security and well being. It’s not the easiest situation,” Paseska added.

Paseska said he’s owned the house for 10 years and has at times been accused of being a drug dealer.

“The only thing we do here is smoke marijuana once in a while and we do drink alcohol and we have some karaoke parties because we do sing karaoke a lot. The neighbours call the police when it’s too loud,” he said.

“The justice system has to take care of this properly because we’re not feeling taken care of. We’re not feeling like there is any justice, other than the two of them being locked up,” Edwards said. “It was an out of body experience for me. I wanted to believe it was a dream.”

“I went from, ‘please don’t kill me to standing there, saying go ahead and kill me, to having an adrenaline rush to try and stop them. It was a terrifying experience for both of us,” Paseska said.

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