Editor’s note: At the request of the victims, no last names are used and Gail is an assumed name for the female victim.

For Tom and Gail, 1308 Patsy Albritton Street is no longer home.

In less than a week they have found a new place, the memories of the ordeal with a bank robbery suspect who shot himself and died this past weekend too hard, too painful, a reminder they could have been killed themselves last Thursday.

In the seven years they lived at 1308, there were four bank robberies. In those four years none of the suspects ever came to their house until Thursday. “I was watching TV,” Tom said. “Watching Cold Case.”

Gail was changing clothes in the bathroom. Neither knew there had been at bank robbery at First Citizens on Tenth Street shortly after 3:30 p.m. Thursday.

“The door got open. I thought I left the chain bolt on,” said Tom, thinking it was Gail’s son. “That’s what I thought it was. By the time I got up he had already pushed the door in. I told her to call 911. Before she could make the call he had a gun in my back, pushing me in the bathroom with a pistol saying, ‘I got a gun, I got a gun.’”

Nicholas Pierre Clark, the 28-year-old man who later shot himself in their house demanded the couple give him any phones in the house. “He ripped the phone out. The top of the phone is still in the bathroom I reckon.”

Gail said Clark didn’t do anything to her, only telling them to be quiet in the bathroom. “He kept coming to the door asking us if we were both all right.”

“He was polite,” Tom interjected.

Gail said Clark indicated he was going to leave the house.

“We thought he was robbing us, robbing the house,” Tom said. “I took my rings off and put them in my pocket. We kept waiting for him to ask us for money. One time he said he said he was going to put us in the attic.”

It wasn’t until the last hour of their approximately four hour ordeal that Clark ordered them to the attic.

Before then he asked where the scissors were and asked Gail to use them to cut a wig he apparently wore during the bank robbery and flush the pieces down the toilet. “It was a black wig. I cut it up and dropped some on the floor. He never came in the bathroom so we left some on the floor so the police could see it was a black wig,” Gail said.

Through the ordeal Clark kept telling the couple to be quiet, that he would be out of the house shortly.

Then Gail heard him talking to a friend on the phone. “He was talking to some guy and he asked why he was talking so low and tell Jessica — his wife — I love her and he continued to talk. He was talking about Presto, a barbershop. He didn’t mention any specific house but he said over there by Presto is a house.”

Clark did talk to Gail’s son, who told him the police, who just received a search warrant, were about to kick the door in. “When he was talking with (her son) he said I can shoot you mamma before the police get in and we didn’t know he only had one bullet.”

Sometime after 5 p.m. Clark led the couple to the attic. “Don’t get me wrong we were scared but that was as scared as we got,” Tom said. “I was scared he was going to shoot us in the attic. He told us to cover our faces. She had a wash rag over her face, I had my shirt over my face and hands over my eyes.”

Clark helped Gail up the attic stairs.

Asked what was going through their minds when they were in the attic Tom said, “Death. That was the only thing I thought was going to happen.”

Said Gail: “Life flashed before our eyes.”

Said Tom: “I thought he was going to shoot us in the attic and leave us there.”

At some point, the couple doesn’t know when, Clark left them in the attic and went downstairs. “We heard the walkie talkies out there for 15 minutes,” Tom said.

Then, Gail said, “Then the next thing we heard was ‘We got a search warrant, we got a search warrant. We’re coming in, we’re coming in.’ Glass started breaking.”

Police asked them to talk and the couple saw officers shining lights. “When the police finally did shine the light they started yelling to put our hands up,” Tom said.

Police escorted the couple out of the house and then went back inside. When officers confronted Clark he put his gun to head and shot himself. He died Saturday at Pitt Memorial Hospital in Greenville.

The stress remains for the couple, they said in the interview at their motel room. “We still wake up when we hear something drop,” Tom said.

While the couple had no idea the ordeal would end with Clark shooting himself, Tom said Gail did hear one conversation where the man said he didn’t think he was going to make it out.

The last trip the couple will make back to Patsy Albritton Street is to get their belongings for their move to a new place. “I think the main reason is because he shot himself in there,” Tom said.

Said Gail: “I don’t think I could look up to the TV and remember that’s where he shot himself.”

They made one trip to get their clothes and Tom said they didn’t feel comfortable being there.

Tom doesn’t agree with people who say Clark got what he deserved and he’s one less person the taxpayers would have to fund during a prison stay. “No,” he says. “I don’t like saying it, but the only thing I can say is I’m glad it wasn’t us. I feel sorry for the guy to do something like that to kill himself. I don’t like what he did. I have no hatred for the boy. I’m sorry he did it. He should have took off running like everybody else that robs a bank.”