SOUTH FULTON, Ga. — A metro Atlanta homeowner says she woke up to a masked man inside her house. Now, she’s now issuing a warning for others.
“That old school stuff don’t do it anymore. Don’t. Just don’t do it,” Melody LaCoste told Channel 2’s Tom Jones.
She talking about the practice of leaving a spare door key under the welcome mat.
LaCoste says it was around 3:30 a.m. June 28. She was in bed asleep in her City of South Fulton home near Cedar Grove Road.
She says she felt someone in the bedroom.
“Just like a presence. And I woke up and he was moving,” she said.
LaCoste says she was frightened out of her mind when she opened her eyes and saw a masked man just inches away, staring at her.
“I screamed, and he took off running down the steps out the door real fast,” she said.
She says she took off down the stairs where she quickly locked the front door, called 911, and sat on her staircase steps waiting on police.
But then: “I see the doorknob turning.”
She knew it couldn’t be police because they would have announced themselves.
Frightened, she rushed to the door and pulled back the curtain.
It was the intruder. He came back.
“We looking at each other like this. He’s looking at me. I’m looking at him,” she said.
She says now his face wasn’t covered.
“So, then all of a sudden the door is flung open,” she said.
LaCoste says the intruder raced past her and went back upstairs.
She ran out of the house and tripped and fell.
“My elbow was bleeding pretty bad and I twisted my foot up,” LaCoste said.
She says she was unable to move and was in her front yard with only a tank top and underwear. She was afraid she was a sitting duck for the intruder.
But LaCoste says about a minute later the intruder ran back out of her home and disappeared into the darkness.
Lacoste says police got there and didn’t believe her story about an intruder. She thinks because she told the officers the intruder busted through the door.
She says a relative arrived and noticed something strange.
“He said, ‘You know there’s a key in your top lock?’ I said no. I didn’t know that,” she recalled.
It was the spare key she kept under the welcome mat that was in the door. LaCoste now believes that’s how the intruder kept getting in.
LaCoste is now warning the public to be more careful with their spare keys: “Find you a good hiding place. Yeah. That’s my advice.”
She says keyless locks are the way to go. And she plans to put up cameras.
Jones spoke to the police chief of the City of South Fulton. He said he is looking into the incident and how his officer handled it.
Meanwhile, LaCoste is starting trauma therapy after this frightening encounter.
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