DRUG SEEKERS HOLD PAIR AT GUNPOINT

* Two Masked Teen-agers Break Into The Wrong Springfield House But Leave
The Couple Who Live There Unharmed After Failing To Find Drugs

SPRINGFIELD -- An elderly couple were astonished they weren't hurt Tuesday
after two masked teen-agers pushed their way into their home and held them
at gunpoint for more than an hour.

"I never thought something like this could happen to us," said Lillian
Irene Johansen, 73. "I just thank the good Lord they didn't shoot us."

At nightfall, Springfield police continued their intensive search for the
two suspects, both of whom were described as white males between the ages
of 15 and 18. Sgt. John King said the young men apparently were looking for
drugs and went to the wrong house.

"Whatever information these two had about finding narcotics, they were way
off base by going to this house," King said. The neighborhood, a cluster of
middle class, well-kept homes is a "distinctly nondrug-involved area," he
said.

One suspect was described as being 5 feet 10 inches to 6 feet tall. He was
wearing a black parka-style jacket with a hood, dark pants and cowboy
boots. The other suspect was described as being 5 feet 1 inch to 5 feet 7
inches, with a thin build and facial stubble. He was wearing an aqua ski
jacket, also with a hood. The two kept their faces covered throughout the
incident, King said and also wore gloves.

Lillian Johansen said she and her husband, Arlo V. Johansen, had just
finished breakfast about 10 a.m. and were waiting for one of her six
daughters to visit when they heard a knock on the front door.

"I couldn't imagine who it was," she said. "Our neighbors and our children
generally knock and then come right in."

While her husband, who is disabled, remained seated at the kitchen table,
Johansen opened the door and found the barrel of a semiautomatic pistol
pointed at her face. She said the man with the gun pushed her down on the
hallway floor, then went into the kitchen, where he forced her husband to
lie prone on the floor.

"I started crying," she said. "I begged them to not shoot us. I said I had
19 grandchildren. The little guy started yelling at me, and the big guy
leaned down and told me to be quiet and I'd be all right."

After searching through the house, Johansen said, she heard the two men
admit to each other that they had the wrong house and that the narcotics
they'd expected to find were not there.

"That's when the little guy asked A.V. where he kept his money," she said.

The suspects took all the cash in the house, between $200 and $1,000,
Johansen said, then tore the telephone out of the wall and ran down the
street, toward Springfield's Gateway Mall.

King said police, who had received an earlier call from one of the
Johansens' neighbors reporting two suspicious men, took that neighbor to
the mall to search for the suspects. He said the area also has been
extensively searched.

"We're beating the bushes all over there," King said.

Johansen, who is a retired nurse, said she and her husband married two
years ago, after the deaths of their spouses. She said her husband, who
suffers from heart disease and hearing loss and who has lived in the home
for 35 years, is a former longtime employee of Springfield's Borden
Chemical Co. He served in the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II, she
said.

By Tuesday afternoon, most of her seven children and his two either had
come by to check on the couple or had called, she said.

Checked-by: Richard Lake