"He was just right here standing, staring at me, like if he was about attack me or something." Seventeen-year-old Beatriz Palacios woke up just before eight Thursday morning, to what seemed like a bad dream.
A man she didn't know was standing over her. She was so startled, she couldn't even scream. "I was in shock, I didn't know what to say. He was just staring at me, but when I was going to run out, he was going to grab me. But I opened the door and I ran. And he got scared so he jumped."
Police say the man had been prowling a south Bakersfield neighborhood all morning, and Palacios' room wasn't his first attempted break-in. He tried another home, right across the street.
"He was looking through all the open windows and this one was closed, but we saw him there too," says Solymar Blanco, neighbor.
Blanco was home with her mom and aunt when her household got a rude awakening. Blanco was asleep in bed when she says the man came to her window, took off her screen, and tried to break in. But fortunately her window was locked.
"Then he went to my aunt's window, because that's the only window in the house that was open. He tried to take the screen off, and then my aunt got up and she saw him, with his hand right here, and she got up and said hey!," adds Blanco.
The scream scared the man off. "We have mutliple witnesses who saw him jumping fences he went on the roof of at least one house," said sergeant Phil Clark Bakersfield Police.
Nearby Palla Elementary was put on lockdown as police searched the area. "We got units on scene pretty quickly, we were able to establish a perimeter and keep him contained," added Clark.
Police arrested 22-year-old Brian Ambriz Contreras, but the damage, at least for Palacios, is done. Her sense of safety in her home is shattered. "I don't think I'm even going to sleep in here."
No one was injured. Police say Contreras is facing two counts of burglary, and one count of resisting arrest.
