A woman living in Pittsburgh’s Greenfield neighborhood said she woke up to a terrifying sound and found herself face-to-face with an intruder.<\/p>\n
Madalyn Durmis described the attack as “absolutely terrifying,” saying she was asleep a little after midnight when she heard “a thud and a loud crash.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
Durmis walked out of her bedroom to investigate and froze. A stranger dressed head-to-toe in black was inside her home, coming up the stairs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“The first thing he said to me when he looked up and realized I was out of my room was, ‘State police, you’re under arrest,'” she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Durmis says she never saw a weapon, and as far as she knows, the man was unarmed. But she knew he wasn’t police. She pushed the man back down the stairs. Then she spotted a broken shower curtain rod in the hallway she simply hadn’t gotten around to throwing away.<\/p>\n
“I grabbed it and went down the stairs after him and ran after him into the street,” she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Durmis said she chased the intruder out of her home and down the sidewalk before he took off running. <\/p>\n
She says a neighbor’s Ring camera captured the man nearby. Durmis says police showed her the video and she identified the man on it as the intruder who had just been in her home. <\/p>\n
Then, she called her dad. Mark Durmis lives about 30 minutes away and rushed to help his daughter. He says police raised an even more unsettling possibility. <\/p>\n
“Even the sergeant from Pittsburgh police says, ‘We think that this person was watching.’ I said, ‘Absolutely, he knows that there’s two females living there,'” Mark Durmis said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“But he didn’t think he’d find somebody that fights back,” he added. “Well, luckily she is my daughter and she knows how to defend herself.”<\/p>\n
Madalyn Durmis fought the intruder off, but he’s still at large tonight. She says getting him out of her home hasn’t erased the fear of what could happen next. <\/p>\n
“He knows where I live and he could come back,” she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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