With a Shout, Woman Chases Burglar Out of Her House

A Wauwatosa woman encountered a young, powerfully built burglar who had just climbed in a living room window and faced him down with a shout, sending him flying out the front door.

The woman called police at 10:20 a.m. Thursday to say that a burglar had just fled from her home in the 7000 block of Maple Terrace. Officers streamed to the area but were unable to locate a suspect.

The woman told investigators her doorbell rang around 10 a.m. and she was going toward the door when it was rung five more times in succession, which she found unsettling. She peeked out a window and could see the lower half of a man's body, and he was holding a bottle of laundry detergent.

The homeowner thought the visitor was soliciting and decided she didn't want to answer.

But 15 or 20 minutes later, she heard a strange pounding noise. As she stepped from her bathroom into her kitchen, she saw a man coming through the window off her enclosed front porch and into her living room.

"What the hell are you doing in my house?" she shouted – and with that, the startled burglar bolted out the front door.

She described the burglar as a black man in his 20s, 5-feet-9- to 5-feet-10-inches tall, weighing 200 to 220 pounds with a muscular build, wearing a light-colored sleeveless shirt, light shorts, tennis shoes and a tan brimmed hat.

No neighbors who were home at the time saw or heard anything suspicious.

Police found that the burglar had used a prying tool to wrench open both a latched storm window and the locked inner window sash, breaking the lock.