A Kamloops woman targeted in a bizarre home invasion on Tuesday says she still can’t believe what happened.
Police said they were called to a residence in the 600-block Fortune Drive at about 7:45 p.m. for a report of a break-in followed by an assault — a beating that left the would-be burglar with serious injuries.
Castanet Kamloops has agreed not to name the woman targeted in the break-in because she fears for her safety. She said she lives in a basement suite and heard banging from the unit above her on Tuesday evening.
“I just thought, ‘OK, he’s breaking stuff, that’s fine,’ but then I start seeing my whole ceiling flexing,” she said of her upstairs neighbour.
“And before I know it he busted through my ceiling.”
She said the man began throwing tools through the hole, then pushed an auger through.
“A big, huge, sharp auger,” she said. “And then he dropped through my ceiling.”
The woman described a frenzied scene. She said the intruder landed on top of her 26-year-old son’s bike.
“He got tangled up but then he jumped up and came at us with the auger,” she said.
“I was trying to stay out of the way of this auger and my son is trying to push him away and get him out of the way, but he wouldn’t stop. My son wrestled with him to get that auger.”
The woman said she fled the suite. From outside, she could hear her son fighting with the man.
“I could hear him screaming, ‘Get out of my house, get out of my house,’” she said.
“I had called 911, and before the police got here my son had managed to drag this guy up the stairs and outside and was pushing him away.”
The woman said the intruder “just wouldn’t stay down.”
“He kept getting up and running at him and trying to come again and again to keep fighting,” she said.
“All the neighbours were out screaming and yelling, telling them to stop, telling him to stay down, to not move.”
According to the woman, the intruder ran when police showed up. She said he was arrested at gunpoint.
Mounties said the break-in suspect was taken to hospital for treatment of serious but non-life-threatening injuries while the assailant police referred to earlier — the woman's son — was arrested and released, pending the results of the RCMP investigation.
Police said they could not provide any further details about the incident.
The woman said the break-in has left her shaken.
“Who goes through a roof like that?” she said.
“The RCMP were blown away with it. They were standing under the hole looking at it with their flashlights like, ‘How did he do this?’”
The woman said she’s been in touch with her landlord, who promised “an immediate eviction” for the intruder and safety upgrades.
She said she had no real issues with her upstairs neighbour prior to the break-in. She said she didn’t get much rest on Tuesday night thanks to the hole in her ceiling.
“I got no sleep,” she said. “Every noise, I was scared he was coming back.”
The police investigation is ongoing.
