Four on home invasion charges

POLICE have charged a Toowoomba Bandido and three other men over a violent home invasion in which gunmen tied up a woman and threatened to kill her and her son.

Bandidos member John Justin Doyle, 40, was arrested after a major police raid of the Bandidos club house in Harlaxton and offenders' homes on Wednesday.

Detectives have charged Doyle, Adam Bowman, 25, Stephen Francis Wilson, 61, and a 36-year-old Tannum Sands man with armed robbery and entering a dwelling with intent to commit a crime.

It will be alleged three of the men approached a 49-year-old woman at her Gowrie Junction home while she was having a cigarette on the veranda at 9.30pm on January 9.

The trio was armed with a handgun, rifle, and baseball bat.

The woman was grabbed and had a rifle pointed at her head.

After a struggle she was forced facedown on the lounge room floor and a man used zip ties to bind her wrists together.

The man armed with the rifle again threatened to shoot her if she did not stop screaming.

The woman's 20-year-old son had been in the shower and heard her screams.

He opened the bathroom door where a man armed with a handgun was waiting for him, threatening to "blow (his) guts out" if he moved.

The son slammed the door on the gunman and escaped the house.

He was chased by the gunman until he jumped a high fence and ran to his neighbour's house.

The young man was unaware his mother was tied up when he fled.

The woman said she could hear loud noises and thought her son was being bashed.

However, the noises were the trio prying a gun safe from a wall in a bedroom. They stole the safe which contained two rifles and ammunition.

The woman victim of the home invasion told The Chronicle she had felt frightened for the past five months.

The family has installed video surveillance and obtained a private phone number because the woman was threatened after the incident by one of the men involved.

This offender had allegedly set-up the home invasion, but was not present on the night.

"I find it hard to go to sleep as (that night) is going through my mind all the time," she said yesterday.

"My son took it very hard and was angry about what had happened."