Four years ago, TikToker Alix Sterling (@alixsterling) was home alone with her six-month-old daughter when someone broke into her house.
The night before the break-in, her husband asked her if she wanted him to teach her a self-defense mechanism because he was going out of town for work the next morning. She told him no.
He left for work at 5:30 a.m. Sometime around 7:15 a.m., she was startled awake by the sound of a man’s voice at the end of her bed.
He was saying things like, “Where are you? When are you going to get here?”
Her first thought was that her husband had called a plumber, who came out to the house early and didn’t know she was there. She also thought she must have slept in pretty late. Her daughter was in the bed next to her, still asleep.
Alix sat up and saw this man pacing back and forth. She asked him who he was, but he didn’t acknowledge her or even look in her direction. She could tell that something was off, but she lay back down because it felt like she was just dreaming at first.
“I slowly pulled the blanket over mine and my daughter’s heads because it’s very quickly clicking that this man is not supposed to be in my house,” Alix said.
“I then start to think to myself, what do I do because I have nothing to defend myself with. The best I can come up with was a small, puny lamp that I had next to the bed.”
She heard him talking on the phone and rummaging around in the primary bathroom. She assumed he was there to take valuable items.
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The security alarm also automatically turned off at 7:15 every morning. Her husband was probably about two hours away from home, so there was no way he could get to her in time. It was up to her to keep herself and her daughter safe.
So, she launched herself out of bed while keeping her daughter covered with the blankets, and started yelling at the man to get out of her house.
She ran after him, chasing him throughout the house. Once he rounded a certain corner of the house, she raced back to her room, locked the door, and called the police. Her daughter was still peacefully sleeping during all the commotion.
Luckily, the police got there quickly. They were already in the area because this man and his friends had been breaking into nearby homes.
The man had broken into her house by kicking down her front door. The police think that he came from a vacant house across the street right when her husband left at 5:30.
He left her house and was running down the street when the cops spotted him. They released a dog on him to catch him. Meanwhile, Alix and her daughter were hiding in the closet, waiting for an officer to check on them.
“It felt like an eternity,” said Alix. “When I went back and located the call log, it was actually like maybe seven to 10 minutes from the time I called to the time the cops were knocking on my door for me to come out of my closet.”
“It actually makes my blood pressure rise a little bit, reliving that situation.”
Once the sheriff came out to investigate the situation, he told her that having a good guard dog, a home security system, and self-defense mechanisms were the keys to keeping intruders away.
Overall, Alix is grateful that she and her daughter managed to stay safe and that the situation wasn’t worse than it was.
By Emily Chan
Emily Chan is a writer who covers lifestyle and news content. She graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in... More about Emily Chan
