After waking up to find stranger in her home, Pittsburgh woman chases him out with curtain rod

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.

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." 

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. 

"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. 

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.

"I grabbed it and went down the stairs after him and ran after him into the street," she said. 

Durmis said she chased the intruder out of her home and down the sidewalk before he took off running.

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.

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.

"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. 

"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."

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.

"He knows where I live and he could come back," she said.