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j Family pieces life together after attackContinued from page 1At their bedroom door, Marty Larson spun around and “stomped” her feet, she said, preparing to fight.Rex Larson yelled he was coming.Marty Larson remembers the giant hallway mirror reflecting the chase.“Maybe he thought the image in the mirror was someone coming j out of a bedroom,” Marty Larson said.The intruder then ran back toward the daughter’s room and the back stairway.The father and the two sons — Ed, 20, and Martin, 19 — were running out of their bedrooms.The family thinks the intruder disappeared down the back stairs.Marty Larson ran to her daughter’s room. The girl was sitting in bed “with blood all over,” Marty Larson said.They took Desiree Mitchell into the hall and sat her down. Ed Larson called the police and ambulance.The girl keeled over backward onto the hall floor.“All I could think of is she was dying,” Marty Larson said.Mitchell was treated and released Thursday at Ottumwa Regional Health Center.Although a purse was taken, the parents and police think the attack was sole purpose for the intrusion.Rex Larson: “He could’verobbed us all night and nobody would’ve known it.”Now the Larsons are trying to piece their lives back together. They are sleeping sporadically. Some family members watch over the sleeping ones.Mitchell — the crown of her head bandaged — is nervous about phone calls; some crank calls have been received.She doesn't want to talk publi-cally about the events last Thursday morning.“People don’t realize, unless it happens to them, how totally destructive it is to their lives,” Marty Larson said.The Larsons are trying to decide whether they want to stay at the 80-year-old house that they moved into last November.But, as Rex Larson observed, “where can you run to where you can be sure you are safe?”SLASHER
Newspaper Details
Ottumwa Courier
Ottumwa, Iowa, US
Sat, Jul 30, 1988
Page 8
Full Page
Clipped by
Anonymous
USA 09 Aug 2020
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