Two brothers arrested after violent northwest Cape Coral home invasion, police say

CAPE CORAL, Fla. —

Cape Coral police arrested two brothers, Steven Ryan and Palmer Aikens, after they allegedly broke into a man’s home in northwest Cape Coral early yesterday morning, assaulted him, and threatened to kill him.

Police said the victim was sleeping when the suspects entered his bedroom, pistol-whipped him, stole items, and made threats against his life.

Milva Gonsil, a resident near the arrest site on SE 20th Court, shared her concerns about the incident.

“It’s spooky because it’s so close to home,” Gonsil said.

She added, “All the traffic that goes up and down, and then for cops to be all over the place, you know, it’s like, okay, maybe I won’t walk that way anymore.”

According to a police report, a woman who met Palmer Aikens a few days ago said the victim owed her money. She told police that Aikens said he would “take care of it,” though she did not understand what he meant.

Mercedes Simonds of the Cape Coral Police Department said, “We had all of our resources combined together to be able to get it done.”

The victim’s home security cameras captured the suspects leaving in a dark blue Pontiac. A license plate reader later identified the car near the victim’s home, leading police to conduct a traffic stop hours later at the intersection of Viscaya Parkway and SE 20th Court.

Simonds explained the department’s approach to locating the suspects.

“We have a lot of different investigative techniques that we’ll use. And we were pretty quickly able to locate these suspects, which is why we were able to do the traffic stop and have something planned,” Simonds said.

During questioning, Steven Ryan initially denied having a gun but later changed his story, saying he might have brought a fake one.

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