In a very motherly turn of events, an 87-year-old woman offered snacks to a teen intruder after he attacked her in her Maine home late last month.
Marjorie Perkins went to bed that night alone, locking the front door behind her. At about 2 a.m., she woke up to a male intruder leaning over her bed threatening to “cut her,” she told The Times Record.
“I thought to myself, ‘If he’s going to cut, I’m going to kick.’ So I jumped into my shoes,” she said.
“He grabbed me by the shoulders and pushed me against the wall,” she told News Center Maine. In response, she used a nearby chair as a shield.
“I was hollering for help out the window,” she told The Times Record, but said that no one heard her. She received a bruise to the head, but said that it could’ve been much worse if the chair hadn’t been there.
Eventually, the intruder tired and headed for the kitchen, telling Perkins that he was “awfully hungry.”
She gave him a box of honey crackers, a jar of peanut butter, two tangerines and two bottles of Ensure. While he was busy eating, she called 911 on her rotary phone.
When police arrived to the home, the intruder had left, the Record reported. They found and arrested him a few blocks away. He faces charges for burglary, criminal threatening, assault and liquor consumption as a minor.
She later recognized him as the young boy who mowed her lawn years earlier.
Perkins believes the teen came through her window by pushing aside the air conditioning unit there, which has since been secured with screws. A neighbor also gave her a bat.
“Don’t sit and cry about it,” she told News Center Maine.
“Be ready to kick and pick up a chair and hit somebody with it,” she chuckled.