A Rutherford County couple has been offering a $3,000 reward for information leading to an arrest after their home was burglarized.
"Not what I was planning on doing on Easter," William Watkins said, as he walked around his house surveying the damage from the break-in that happened Saturday.
Watkins is a veteran of the Marine Corps, a family man, and a religious man, but on this Easter, he was forced to skip church with his wife and stand guard at his home.
"We just don't feel safe leaving the house without the doors locked, which by the looks of it, it's not going to do any good anyway," Watkins explained of the damaged doors at his home.
According to Watkins, the home was likely broken into on Saturday, sometime between 6:45 a.m. when they left for the day and 4 p.m. when the couple returned from visiting family.
The burglars broke in through the back door, breaking their way through three separate doors, walking past flat screen TVs, until they reached the bedroom.
"Somebody stole my wife's jewelry box, stole my gun, stole our safe out of our closet," Watkins said, adding that the safe housed military papers and medals from his time in the Marine Corps. "It's a shame that it's all gone."
The thieves got away with cash, but a gun that was stolen is what has Watkins concerned.
He's hoping the police can catch whoever burglarized his home, so the gun will be taken off the street and so the gun won't be used in any future crimes.
In addition to the gun being stolen, thousands of dollars worth of jewelry was taken from the home.
"A lot of the jewelry we had in there. We'd already had some of it tagged to go to our grandkids," Watkins explained. "We had a set of wedding rings for each one of our grandkids."
Watkins thinks someone was watching the house and broke in after they saw the couple leaving Saturday morning, just one day before Easter.
"You wouldn't think somebody would do something like this so close to a holy day," Watkins said, adding that in addition to stealing belongings, the thieves stole the family's sense of security. "It just makes you feel violated, it really does."
In an effort to get more information and to help police solve the crime, Watkins has put together a $3,000 reward for any information that can lead to an arrest in the case.
If you have any information, you're asked to call the Rutherford County Sheriff's Office.
