A lot of us wonder what we would do if someone broke into our homes. We picture ourselves defending our house and possessions. Maybe hiding -- but where?
When a woman in Venice, California, heard the front door of her house get kicked in early Wednesday morning, she grabbed a cellphone and -- wearing just a flannel shirt and nothing on underneath -- fled to the one place she could get to: her roof.
But the second-story roof was about 20 feet above the sidewalk and she says she couldn't very well jump to safety. She had no other choice but to call police and wait.
And wait.
And wait while the intruder actually followed her onto the roof. For better or worse, thanks to social media and her neighbors and their cellphones, the entire nightmare was caught on camera.
In one chilling photograph, Melora Rivera can be seen hiding underneath the eave of a window while the intruder peers out from over her head.
Police arrived within minutes but had to then figure out how to safely remove Rivera from the roof while a potentially dangerous criminal was pretty much standing a few feet away from her. Cops wound up providing the woman with a ladder she could climb down. They then managed to convince the suspect, who has been identified as a 29-year-old homeless man named Christian Hicks, to come down from the roof.
Now, you might think a woman who has just had to hide on a roof to escape an alleged burglar might harbor some resentment toward him, but Rivera -- who is an actress and appeared in the 2012 movie Sparkle with Whitney Houston -- seems to have nothing but empathy for Hicks. She says she thinks the root of the problem is that transients like Hicks are not getting the help they need and that she sees folks like Hicks all of the time, just wandering around her neighborhood.
This woman was smart to react swiftly and wisely -- and it sounds like she has a good head on her shoulders. So glad to hear of a potentially horrific scenario that turned out okay.
What would you have done if you were in this woman's shoes?
Image via Venice311/Twitter