A Williamsburg woman was able to successfully fight off a burglar insider her apartment this week. "I asked him, 'Are you f-king kidding me?'" victim Tiffany Chang told the Post of the encounter. "He kind of smiled and was like, 'Yeah,' I guess, and then he kind of froze."
Chang, 27, was inside her Lorimer Street apartment on Wednesday afternoon watching TV with her roommate when she went to get her phone from her room. She found the burglar there, clad in all-black, attempting to steal her laptop and make his way out her window and down the fire escape.
"He seemed disoriented," she told the post. "The look on his face wasn’t malicious; it was young and stupid. I thought for a second, 'Does he have a weapon?' I assessed the risk and figured I could make it." They ended up in a tug of war with her laptop which she ultimately won. Then her roommate, Russell Pinke, burst into the room holding a metal bar. "I thought she was afraid of a mouse or a bug, and then realize it was a person," Pinke told CBS of the encounter.
The burglar decided to cut his losses and run for it. No arrests have been made yet, but police are still looking for the burglar, and whether he could be connected to other such thefts in the neighborhood this year.
"I've been robbed a few times before," Chang told NBC, with Pinke noting that this was the third time in five years that a burglar has gotten into their apartment from the fire escape on the side of the building.
"I feel great about doing this," Chang added. "It's been empowering in a lot of ways."
