WFLA
November 15, 2014
St Petersburg Police officers who were responding to two other burglaries in progress say they followed the sound of screams early Wednesday morning and arrested Michael Odhiamba, age 32.
He was attacking two middle-aged sisters during a home invasion of a third home at the 6300 block of 22nd Ave. N.
“It was terrifying,” said Jackie Gamble who was sleeping when Odhiamba started breaking through a jalousy window in the front of her mother’s house.
Her mom wasn’t home because she was hospitalized after surgery that morning.”God had a hand in that timing,”‘ Gamble said.
She called 911, then went into action.”That’s when I hit him with the phone,” said Gamble. “I hit him upside the head.”
Gamble told Eight On Your Side she tried to hold off Odhiamba with a table while her sister Lorena Noel went into combat mode. “She was slinging knives from the kitchen,” Gamble said.
Police say when they showed up minutes later Odhiamba had one of the knifes in his hand. The arrested him without further incident.
The sisters say Odhiamba told officers God told him to break into their home.
“He wasn’t acting rationally,” said St .Petersburg Police Spokeswoman Yolanda Fernandez.”So we did take him to the hospital to be checked.”
He’s in the Pinellas jail under a $150,000 bond and charged with one count of an armed residential burglary with more charges pending.
At the time of the home invasion Odhiamba had just gotten out of the Pinellas County Jail after spending most of the year behind bars on a federal fraud charge related to a Wal Mart scam.
He previously served five years in a Florida prison on a concealed weapons charge and was released last year.