A Pittsburgh woman says she managed to chase a stranger out of her home with a broken curtain rod after finding him coming up her stairs shortly after midnight.
Madalyn “Maddy” Durmis said the man had forced his way through the front door of the Greenfield home she shares with a roommate. When she confronted him, she said he claimed to be a state police officer and told her she was under arrest.
The women did not sleep there for the next two nights. Before returning, they installed security cameras, an alarm, and doorstops in hopes of making the house feel safe again.
On their first night back, one of those new cameras recorded a man Durmis believes was the same intruder returning to the property. Her father arrived about 10 minutes later to walk her to her car.
A Midnight Crash
Embedded media follows; please allow a moment to load.
Pittsburgh Police said Zone 4 officers were sent to the 900 block of Greenfield Avenue at about 12:15 a.m. Wednesday, August 26, for a burglary in progress.
Two women told officers they had been upstairs when they heard a loud noise at the downstairs front door. When they came out of their rooms, they found a man on the stairwell landing.
Durmis gave local news stations a considerably closer view of that encounter. She told WPXI that she awoke to a loud crash and discovered her locked front door had been forced open.
The man was already coming up the stairs.
Durmis said she had never seen him before. She described him as thin, about 5 feet, 8 inches tall, with short brown hair, and said he was wearing a black tank top and black jeans.
Then he offered an explanation that did not improve the situation.
“State Police, you’re under arrest,” Durmis recalled him saying.
Down The Stairs
Durmis said the man continued toward her, so she shoved him. A broken shower-curtain rod happened to be sitting in the hallway, and she grabbed it.
She chased the man downstairs and struck him with the rod as he ran through the damaged doorway.
Police said the man fled the house on foot toward Murray Avenue. Durmis said that on his way out, he grabbed her vehicle keys from a coffee table near the front door.
She continued after him outside before falling near the sidewalk. The man got away.
The city’s account confirms that a set of vehicle keys was reported stolen and that the front doorway was damaged during the break-in. Pittsburgh Police’s Mobile Crime Unit processed evidence at the home, and detectives opened an investigation.
Getting the man out of the house did not solve Durmis’ biggest problem: he knew where she lived.
Two Nights Later
Durmis and her roommate stayed somewhere else for the following two nights.
Before moving back in, they added cameras, an alarm system, and doorstops. Her father had also begun coming to the house to walk his daughter to her car before work.
Those precautions were put to use almost immediately.
Early Friday, the newly installed camera recorded a man Durmis and her family believe was the same person who had broken into the house Wednesday, reported CBS News.
Her father noticed that a gate had been moved when he arrived at the property. When the family checked the footage, they saw the man outside the home.
Durmis’ father had missed him by about 10 minutes.
The family told KDKA that the alarm apparently caused the man to leave before he got inside on the second visit. Durmis said the return left her wondering what he wanted from her in the first place.
That question had already troubled the family after the initial break-in. Durmis said the man had not entered carrying bags or started searching through the house. According to her account, he headed upstairs and only grabbed her keys while fleeing.
Her father told KDKA after the first incident that a Pittsburgh Police sergeant had raised the possibility that the man had been watching the home. That assessment has not appeared in Pittsburgh Police’s public account of the case.
No Arrest Yet
The return also helps answer a question raised repeatedly by people reacting to the story online: why was the man free to come back?
Police have not announced that they know who he is.
As of Friday night, Pittsburgh Police had not publicly identified a suspect or announced an arrest. The city’s original release describes an unknown adult male, and the department says the burglary investigation remains ongoing.
For Durmis, leaving permanently is not her plan.
After a forced door, a midnight confrontation, two nights away from home, and a camera recording another visit, she told KDKA she intends to stay.
“This is my home,” she said. “I have to defend myself.”