87-year-old fought off teenage home intruder — then fed him snacks

globalnews.ca:

Maine, took hospitality to the extreme last week when she fought off a teenage intruder in her home, but then proceeded to feed him crackers and oranges — showing that any conflict is easier to resolve on a full stomach.Marjorie Perkins was asleep in her home last Wednesday when she was awoken around 2 a.m. and saw a teenager standing over her bed.“He said, ‘I’m going to cut you,'” Perkins told the Brunswick Times Record newspaper.

“I thought to myself, ‘If he’s going to cut, I’m going to kick.’ So I jumped into my shoes.”Perkins said the teen started hitting her so she grabbed a chair to use as a shield.“I was hollering for help out the window. … Thank God I had the chair between us.

It would’ve been worse,” said Perkins, adding that no one heard her cries and the attack continued.“He kept punching me and pushing me,” she said. The teen punched her forehead, causing a bruise, but Perkins kicked him and fought back with the chair.

Eventually, she managed to push him away.The 87-year-old said her teenage attacker got tired and went into her kitchen.She noticed he wasn’t wearing pants or shoes, which were in a pile along with a knife next to the air-conditioning unit installed on her window. She said the teen must have moved the air-conditioner’s side panel and squeezed through the gap to break in, since she locked her front door before going to bed.Perkins followed the teen into her kitchen and told him he needed to leave and seek help.“He said he was awfully hungry and hadn’t had anything to eat for quite a while,” Perkins recounted.

“I said, ‘Well, here’s a box of peanut butter and honey crackers. You can have that whole box.’ I gave him two containers of Ensure and I gave him two tangerines.”As the intruder was eating,