Couple foil armed intruder by beating him with a bat

A husband and wife turned the tables on an armed intruder Thursday morning by severely beating the man with a baseball bat after he broke into their home south of Monroe, according to the Snohomish County Sheriff's Office.

At about 3 a.m. a man burst into Roger and Donna Angevine's bedroom with a flashlight and screamed at them to get on the floor, the couple told KING-TV. He had a gun in one hand and was swinging a baseball bat in the other, the couple told KING-TV.

When the man said he was alone, Roger Angevine lunged at him. Once Angevine tackled the man, he told his wife to grab the bat and start hitting him.

"We said 'Quit fighting and we'll quit,' but he wouldn't," Donna Angevine told KING-TV. Roger Angevine suffered a cut to his forehead in the melee. His wife got a black eye.

The couple told the TV station they didn't think the break-in was random, but they wouldn't go into detail.

The man apparently entered the home in the 21600 block of 164th Drive Southeast through an unlocked door, the Sheriff's Office said.

The suspect, who is believed to be a 24-year-old Monroe-area man, was first taken to Valley General Hospital in Monroe and then to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle for evaluation, the Sheriff's Office said. He is under watch at the hospital and his injuries are not life-threatening, sheriff's spokeswoman Rebecca Hover said.

Once the man is released from the hospital, detectives expect to book him into the Snohomish County Jail on charges of first-degree robbery, she said. Hover didn't know when he might be released.

The Angevines' home is set back from the sparsely populated street by a long driveway. There's an iron gate at the end of the driveway.

Leslie Anne Jones: 206-464-2745 or ljones@seattletimes.com