Kids thought 'daddy was dead' in early morning home invasion

• Mother locked kids in bedroom
• 2 men taken to hospital
• Intruder tried to climb back into house

Trevor and Alyssa Taylor were sleeping just before 3:45 a.m. Wednesday when they heard the sound of breaking glass coming from the first floor of their house in West Manchester Township.

Alyssa called 911, and Trevor grabbed his handgun and headed downstairs.

“I fired a warning shot and told whoever was down there not to come in my house,” Trevor said Wednesday afternoon.

When he came downstairs, Trevor found Zachary Lomenzo lying on the kitchen floor, not far from a broken window, according to a police statement. Police said Trevor pointed his gun at Lomenzo and told him to get out of the house. When he stood, Trevor, a man well-muscled through years of working with construction material, pushed him back through the broken window and told him to stay still.

While this was going on, Alyssa had locked their children, ages 10, 7 and 1½ years, inside the room of their youngest daughter.

“They heard the shot, and they thought their daddy was dead,” Alyssa said as she held their youngest daughter. “I thought my husband was dead.”

The older kids left the house for the day, and now they don’t want to come home, Alyssa said.

“They are scared.”

Even with a gun pointed at him, Lomenzo didn’t listen and tried to re-enter the house through the window.

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Trevor repeatedly punched him through the shards of glass remaining in the window frame. Pictures show a kitchen floor covered in drops of blood, from the intruder, and from a gash that went to the tendon on Trevor’s right hand that took nearly 20 stitches to close.

Trevor said he finally knocked Lomenzo to the floor of the porch, where he tried to hold him.

Lomenzo must have broken free, because he approached the police car when officers arrived.

"As we were getting out of our marked patrol vehicles, a white male with long stringy brown hair, dressed in shorts, a T-shirt and bare footed came jogging toward us," the police affidavit states.

One officer pulled his Taser and ordered Lomenzo to stop and lie down on his stomach. It wasn't until the second officer appeared that the intruder complied, at which time he was handcuffed, according to police. 

Police said Lomenzo "had a lot of blood on him, but they couldn't tell the seriousness of his injuries."

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Lomenzo refused to identify himself. Police found a silver Mitsubishi in a field west of the Taylors' house that is registered to Lomenzo, and by using a photo provided by PennDOT, they were able to make the identification. 

Both men were transported to the hospital for treatment.

“It’s all cleaned up now,” Trevor said of the new porch window and the special crew that worked to get rid of the blood.

“[Blood] was on the floor, it was on my kitchen cabinets,” Alyssa said.

After treatment, Lomenzo was arraigned on charges of burglary, criminal trespass, defiant trespass and criminal mischief. He is being held on $150,000 bail, police said.

“This all started when he wrecked his car,” Trevor said. “We just happened to be the first house he came to.”

He said he doesn’t know of any connection Lomenzo has to their house, where they have lived for nearly seven years.

“I could have shot him,” Trevor said quietly. “Police told me I would have been within my rights. But I didn’t know his intent. Sometimes you have to refrain yourself from taking a life.”

Trevor said he had him contained, and despite what people are saying about it on social media, he feels like he made the right decision.

“People don’t understand what they would do until they are in that situation,” he said.