THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, December 6, 1995 TAG: 9512060415
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LINDA McNATT, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WINDSOR LENGTH: Medium: 79 lines
Blanche Braswell tools around town in her bright yellow '79 Ford Pinto, has a reputation for baking delicious biscuits, calls everybody ``honey,'' sweeps her yard with homemade brooms, and has a fondness for stuffed animals and knickknacks.
Her tiny house on Deerpath Trail near this town in Isle of Wight County was ``like a dollhouse,'' friends and neighbors say.
Saturday night, the 88-year-old woman's world was ripped apart when vandals broke in while she was away and destroyed most of her furniture and possessions.
``They had to carry my rugs away, full of glass,'' Mrs. Braswell said Tuesday, her hands shaking as she sat in her kitchen. ``They beat my blinds to pieces. I ain't got nothing left. I never will get over it.''
The destruction in Mrs. Braswell's house was unlike anything he has ever seen, said Maj. D.C. Cobb of the Isle of Wight County Sheriff's Department.
Every window was broken. Screens were slashed. Furniture was broken. Glasses and potted plants were thrown through windows, against walls. Every piece of glassware was ripped from cabinets and broken. The refrigerator was turned over and left open. Heads had been ripped off Mrs. Braswell's stuffed animals, mostly gifts.
Police arrested two men around noon Sunday after they were reported drinking in front of a Windsor video store. One of them had fresh cuts on his hands, police said.
Randy M. Vaughan, 18, of Holly Run Drive in Carrsville and Jeff C. Cofield, 19, of Deerpath Trail, Windsor, were charged with breaking and entering and destroying property, Cobb said. Late Tuesday, both were in the Western Tidewater Regional Jail under $100,000 bail. Cofield lives directly across the street from Mrs. Braswell's house.
``I ain't got but one plate and two cups left,'' Mrs. Braswell said, as she fought tears. ``The glasses my daughter gave me - and she's dead now - they broke all but one.''
Mrs. Braswell is a tiny woman who weighs barely 100 pounds. She moved into the five-room, rented house in 1963 with her husband when his health forced him to stop farming. He died five years later, but Mrs. Braswell stayed on.
Mrs. Braswell lives on a Social Security income of less than $500 a month. She had no insurance on her belongings, and most of the food she had was in the refrigerator.
``All my sausage, stuff I froze this summer - butter beans, corn, strawberries - all of it gone.''
When Mrs. Braswell developed a heart condition a few years ago, her daughter, Virginia O'Berry, persuaded her to spend nights with her. But each morning, she was ready to return home, said O'Berry's husband, William.
A neighbor called the O'Berrys Sunday morning around 7.
``They didn't leave me but one rocking chair,'' Mrs. Braswell told her niece, Thelma Brown. ``And that's broke.''
Friends, relatives and neighbors pitched in Monday to help clean up the mess. Virginia O'Berry said four pickup loads of broken furniture and glass were hauled away.
Mrs. Braswell's landlord, who lives nearby, has promised to repair the house. But many of her things can never be replaced, including the television she refused to give up because her husband had enjoyed watching it so much.
The family is as stumped as police are about why anyone would have committed such an act. Mrs. Braswell, they say, has no enemies.
Despite the destruction, however, there is some hope.
``This is home,'' Mrs. Braswell repeated Tuesday. ``I love to clean. I'll get it straight, and I'll have a nice little house again.''
Vaughan and Cofield are scheduled to be arraigned today in Isle of Wight General District Court. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
JOHN H. SHEALLY II/The Virginian-Pilot
Blanche Braswell, 88, who suffers a heart condition, with a
vandalized electric meter outside her boarded-up home Tuesday on
Deerpath Trail near Windsor in Isle of Wight County.
KEYWORDS: VANDALISM ARREST by CNB