THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 17, 1996 TAG: 9603150216
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS PAGE: 04 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY REBECCA A. MYERS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 105 lines
When 84-year-old Vergie E. Prillaman heard the sound of breaking glass, she assumed one of the neighborhood children had accidentally batted a ball through the den window of her Highland Park home.
But minutes later, an intruder had grabbed the retired school teacher by the wrist and shoulder, demanding money.
Prillaman tried to scream, but she says that every time she did the intruder slapped his hand over her mouth.
Meanwhile, 8-year-old Cody Penland, who was playing outside, ran home and told his parents what he had just witnessed: a strange man had broken their next-door neighbor's window and dove right through it.
``He was frantic,'' says Cody's father, Garry Mark Penland, 31, who had the day off from work at Norfolk Naval Shipyard. It was about 4:30 p.m. on Presidents Day.
``He knew for a fact that something was up,'' Penland says.
Within seconds, the entire Penland family - mom, dad and an older son - sprang into action. Their efforts saved Prillaman from potential harm and earned the family a Portsmouth Medal of Honor, which the City Council awarded them Tuesday night.
Soon after Cody alerted his family, Penland - who had been in his bedroom reading an Alfred Hitchcock mystery magazine - threw on his shoes and rushed next door. His wife, Tammy, was already on her way.
``She could see what was going on, and she could hear them scuffling,'' says Penland, who also witnessed the commotion.
When the intruder saw the neighbors coming, he dragged Prillaman from the kitchen to an enclosed - and locked - back porch, similar to a Florida room. He warned the Penlands to stay away.
``Man, I ain't going nowhere without you,'' Penland told the intruder.
Still trapped within the stranger's grasp, Prillaman yelled to Penland to break a window.
``So I threw a rock through the window, and I went and got another rock because if this guy was going to get close enough to the window, I was going to nail him with the rock.''
Penland then reached through the broken glass and grabbed the intruder's coat. When the man jerked back, Penland's forearm was ripped open by the broken glass.
``Blood just poured,'' Prillaman recalls.
Though Penland didn't realize it, nerves as well as muscles in his left forearm were severed.
``This stuff just really started falling out of my arm,'' Penland says. ``And I had to push it all back in there and then just hold it.''
It was at that point that Tammy Penland yelled to her 12-year-old son, Paul, to call 911.
``We didn't even think about it before then,'' she says. ``Everything happened so quickly that it just didn't dawn on us to call 911 right away.''
After paramedics arrived, they rushed Penland to Maryview Medical Center for more than two hours of emergency microsurgery.
``I had a tourniquet on my arm - I had two towels on my arm just to try to control the bleeding. But there was nothing that was going to stop that bleeding.''
During the turmoil, the intruder bolted out the door. Police arrested Lee Eugene Dixon in the 100 block of Baldwin Avenue, just a few blocks away.
Dixon, 32, of the 400 block of Grayson Street, was charged with burglary, possession of burglarious tools, attempted robbery and abduction. The case was certified to the grand jury last Monday. He was being held in the Portsmouth City Jail on $7,500 bail.
I was afraid that the man had a razor or a knife to stab me or to cut my throat because he was just holding me so tight,'' says Prillaman, widowed since Feb. 1. ``I was just trembling inside.''
Though basically uninjured, Prillaman still has a bruised wrist. ``It's been blue-like ever since.''
Penland's injuries, however, are much more serious. After his cast is removed, he will have to start rehabilitation on his elbow. In another month, therapy beings on his wrist and fingers.
``They still don't want my fingers or anything to move because they want my muscles to have more time to really set in and to heal,'' he says.
A former pipefitter, Penland had just started an office job at the shipyard before the incident. He missed about two weeks of work.
``I'm so sorry that Penland was hurt working for me, trying to save my life,'' Prillaman says.
For nine years, the Penlands - who live in the first block of Benton Avenue - have lived behind Prillaman, whose house faces Maupin Avenue.
The neighbors would often wave to one another in passing and share vegetables from Prillaman's garden, but they rarely paid visits to each other's homes or socialized outside the neighborhood.
The break-in changed all that.
``I'm taking them all out to eat to the Red Lobster on Saturday,'' Prillaman said last week. ``I need to do something for them because they did so much for me.''
Though the story has received extensive play on all the local TV news channels and many radio stations, Penland insists he is no hero.
``I just hope - especially with all the publicity - that this motivates more people to do the right thing. Maybe not necessarily to the extreme that we went, but at least call 911. Pick up the phone.
``If you've got a video camera, videotape it. Put him on film. Catch him in the act!'' ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo by MOTOYA NAKAMURA
The Penlands, Paul, 12, clockwise from left, Tammy, Mark and Cody,
8, received the Portsmouth Medal of Honor on Tuesday.
KEYWORDS: HERO ASSAULT RESCUE by CNB