ROSWELL, Ga. — Imagine having no idea a stranger was inside your home for hours until you stumbled upon him, lying on the floor of a room just feet from your bed in the middle of the night.
“I’ll never forget that story,” Gwynne Ketcham explained.
Not only was the man inside Ketcham’s home a stranger, but also an accused bank robbery suspect who was on the run from Roswell Police.
On Monday afternoon, police said the 27-year-old suspect robbed the Truist Bank on Holcomb Bridge Road in Roswell. Throughout the day, police said they were able to develop a suspect and a car description.
On Tuesday, police said the suspect’s vehicle triggered license plate readers on East Crossville Road, where officers were dispatched to saturate the area to find the vehicle. A short time later, officers caught up to the vehicle and initiated a traffic stop. However, the suspect refused to stop and led officers on a chase until he crashed off Mountain Park Road in the city of Mountain Park.
Police said the suspect then ran away, which led to an hours-long manhunt in the nearby neighborhoods.
Ketcham’s home was inside the perimeter in which multiple agencies were assisting Roswell Police in the manhunt. The search continued into late Tuesday evening until they scaled back later that night.
“I knew there was a chase," she explained. "I had actually taken pictures of the police in my backyard on Tuesday."
Ketecham said officers searched an outbuilding on her property where they thought the suspect might be hiding.
“So, it was kind of on my radar. I knew to be paying attention, but I also felt like he’s probably moved on by now,” she said.
She was also distracted with other things happening in her life.
“I had a pretty bad day. I had to say goodbye to one of my cats,” Ketcham explained.
Speaking of cats, Ketcham helps with rescuing, fostering and adopting cats. So, while she did have a tough day with losing one of her beloved cats, she has several more in the house.
In fact, it was an adoption she had to run out and make happen at a nearby PetSmart that she believes was the window of opportunity for the suspect, who was on the loose in her neighborhood, to find a place to hide.
Ketcham explained that she left the house, met the couple, handed over their new family member and then came back home.
“I came back home, threw myself back into work, then sat at the kitchen table and ate a little bit,” Ketcham said.
She did a few more chores around the house, finished up work and then decided to head to bed. Ketcham was home alone, her husband out of town on a trip with a family friend.
“The cat I said goodbye to always slept next to me, and none of my cats were there,” she said.
Ketcham said she was just restless, missing her cat and then finding it odd none of her other cats were in the room.
By this time, it’s after midnight, close to 12:30 a.m. on Thursday morning.
“I heard what I thought was a knock on the door,” Ketcham explained.
She said she got up, peaked around the corner of her hallway, and looked down the stairs and over her living room but didn’t see anything.
“I thought, 'OK, you’re just imagining it,' but where are the cats?” she asked herself.
Ketcham said as she started back to her room, the only room she hadn’t checked was her husband’s office across the hall from their bedroom. She said they keep kitty litter in the room, so she thought she would check to see if the cats were in the room.
“I pushed on the door, and it stopped. I was like, 'What’s going on? Why won’t the door open?' I reached in, flipped on the switch and saw knees down, legs and boots lying on the floor.” Ketcham explained.
I then asked Ketcham if he moved and if she screamed.
“No, he didn’t move, thank God. I didn’t make a sound, I just started shaking,” she explained.
At this point, Ketcham said she flipped the light back off and decided to head to the garage.
As she was heading down her stairs to the first floor, she noticed there was a man standing kind of off to the side of her front door.
Thinking it may be a second suspect, she said she continued into her garage, where she got inside her vehicle and locked it. Realizing her keys were still up in her bedroom, she called 911.
“He (911 dispatcher) said, 'Ma’am, the police are on your property. What you saw outside your front door was an officer,” Ketcham explained.
She said the dispatcher advised her to go back in the house and let the officer in, which, at first, she questioned.
“I said, 'Do I have to go back in my house? He said, 'You’ll be OK, there’s officers all around your house,” she said.
Ketcham said the officers escorted her to the driveway, and then they all entered her home and went to the room she told them the suspect was in and arrested him on the spot.
She said before they brought him out, they pulled her off to the side, so she never got a good look at the man.
As for how he got into her home, she said the wild part is that when she sat down to eat at her table after running to PetSmart, she looked right at the window in her kitchen that the officers said he broke and used to get into her house.
She said while it’s always had a slight sag to it, she didn’t look close enough to know it was broken. But officers pointed out the suspect had put it back so carefully that if you weren’t right up on it, you wouldn’t have noticed.
Ketcham said she believes she was in the house with the man for almost five hours until she stumbled up on him just after 12:30 a.m. on Thursday.
As for how the police were already at her home when she made her way down the stairs after finding him in the bedroom, remember that knock she thought she heard? It was actually an officer. Ketcham said at some point while in her husband’s office, the suspect used their computer to access some type of app to try and order an Uber or Lyft then actually accessed his Gmail account.
She said police told her that he left an evidence trail that, through technology, they were able to track him down to her home.
The officers had shown up just moments before Ketcham came down the stairs to inform her they believed he was in her home or on her property and were knocking to notify her.
As for her cats, Ketcham said they knew a stranger was in the home and found them all hiding in shelves in her bedroom. She said if it weren’t for them, she would’ve never checked that room across from her bedroom and found the suspect on the floor.
Roswell Police said the suspect is charged with armed robbery and criminal trespass and believes he’s tied to several other armed robberies across metro Atlanta.
Editor's note: The suspect's name in this story was omitted due to 11Alive's guidelines regarding the usage of names and mugshots of people accused of crimes. We've provided additional context of our police online here.