A woman is still shaken after she and her roommate were woken up by a loud crash near midnight and found a male intruder on the stairs who claimed to be an officer. This led to an altercation where the woman brandished a weapon and successfully chased the man out of the house. However, she says the thief was caught on camera stepping onto the porch of the property only two days after the encounter.
Thief returned to the house two days later, woman says
On August 26 at around 12:15 a.m., Pittsburgh officers responded to a report of a burglary in progress near the 900 block of Greenfield Avenue where an intruder had entered the house while two women were asleep, per WPXI.
Madalyn Durmis and her roommate were sleeping on the second floor when they heard a “loud thud,” prompting her to step out of the room.
“And when I get out of my bed,” Durmis recalled, “I go to see what it is and there’s a man coming up my steps.”
She continued, “I yelled, ‘Hey, what are you doing?’ And he said, ‘State Police, you’re under arrest!'”
However, Durmis says the man, who was about five-foot-eight and had short brown hair, wore a black tank top and black jeans without a badge anywhere on him. That’s not exactly how any officer would be dressed.
So when the intruder continued to approach her, the woman’s instincts took over. Durmis pushed him back and grabbed a broken shower curtain rod in the hallway. She beat the man with the weapon and chased him door the stairs and out of the house.
The man was able to steal a set of vehicle keys, though, that was on a coffee table near the front door.
Frightened, Durmis and her roommate stayed elsewhere over the next two days, while she replaced the key fob for her car and installed home security cameras.
That turned out to be the right decision, since the cameras caught what Durmis says was the same intruder, given his similar build and outfit, stepping onto the porch of the home on Friday morning. Per CBS Pittsburgh, footage shows the intruder stopping when he hears the alarm and going up the steps to the porch before deciding to flee from the scene.
“If he comes back, I’m going to make him regret it,” Durmis said. “I can’t be afraid. I have to stay here. This is my home. I have to defend myself.”
The unidentified suspect is still at large, with Pittsburgh police stating that the investigation is still ongoing.
