Fright before Xmas
Fake delivery gunmen rob couplle, grandkids
A gunman pretended to be a UPS deliveryman to help pull off a terrifying home invasion targeting a Bronx couple and their grandkids, swiping dough — even from a kiddie piggy bank, cops and kin say.
“The children, they were screaming, they were screaming the whole time,” Louis Vallerio, the kids’ granddad, who was zip-tied and robbed along with his wife and the little ones, said on Tuesday.
Their attacker was holding a box and wearing a brown jacket and brown winter hat with “UPS” on it when he showed up on the family’s Billingsley Terrace doorstep in Morris Heights around 5 p.m. Monday, police said.
At home at the time were Vallerio, a 63-year-old retiree; his 60-year-old home-health-attendant wife; and their grandchildren — an 8-year-old boy and 5-year-old girl.
The gunman and an accomplice had “knocked [on another door] first, and [the residents] didn’t open, so they came over here,” said a 30-year-old man who identified himself as Daury — the couple’s son and the children’s uncle.
The robbers “said some name that my mom didn’t know, so she cracked the door, and when they saw my mom’s age, they just pushed in immediately.”
The man in the UPS get-up “rushed her with the box first, and then the gun came out right after,” Daury said.
The intruder’s silver revolver was hidden in the box, cops said.
His accomplice soon joined him inside the home, with one of the men snarling at the victims, “Don’t say anything, don’t do anything so we can get done quick.”
The duo then held the older couple and kids at gunpoint while ordering them to bind themselves with zip ties, cops said.
“They were a team,” Vallerio said of the thieves. “One watched us. The other went around taking things.”
The robbers grabbed two iPhones and an iPad belonging to the kids, Daury said.
They also swiped a stash of personal documents and gained access to a safe and a children’s piggy bank — taking more than $7,500 in cash in all, cops said.
The piggy bank held money that Daury was keeping for his 10-yearold daughter, who does not live in the home.
“It’s where I save the money for her,” Daury said.
“They took my parents’ money,’’ too, he said. “My mom was saving money to move out. She had a few thousand saved. She doesn’t know what to do. They took the kids’ phones and tablets.”
Daury said his niece and nephew are traumatized.
“They are more scared and still shook up than even my parents,” he said. “They [are] still physically shaking. My niece left [the house] because she’s scared to be here now.”
But Daury said the family won’t let the ordeal ruin Christmas.
“We’re still opening our presents at midnight on Christmas,” he said. “We’re all going to still sit down to Christmas dinner together.
“I’m not going to let them ruin my family and my kids’ Christmas. It ain’t right — people think this is OK now.”