A woman screamed and scared off a man wearing a ski mask who appeared at the foot of her bed in the early hours of the morning, the Houston Police Department has said.
The terrified woman’s shouts were enough to spur the man to run away. However, he then proceeded to break into a second woman’s property in the same gated community, located south of Buffalo Bayou in the west of the Texas city.
Police got the call about a home invasion at around 2.40 a.m. Tuesday morning and officers arrived and then surrounded the neighborhood on Normans Woods Street and Kingsbridge Lane.
Police said that the women were alone in their properties when the break-ins occurred.
The man tried to sexually assault the second woman, Houston police sergeant Stephen Hendrie said, according to ABC 13, which showed images of a man being arrested and put into a police car.
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The unnamed culprit faces two felony charges; burglary with intent to commit theft and burglary with intent to commit a felony, the news outlet reported. Newsweek has contacted Houston Police Department for further comment.
Last month, an 18-year-old student at Chapman University in Orange, California scared off an attacker wearing a skeleton mask who appeared outside her dorm and tried to sexually assault her.
However, the college freshman had a second-degree blackbelt in karate and was able to fight back. “I don’t know if I hit him off or he heard people coming,” she told NBC Los Angeles, “somehow he got off and I chased him back up the stairs, cursing him out.”
Two male freshman students heard screaming and jumped out of their window to help. Police said that a suspect was arrested after a public safety alert for the attack was issued following the incident on September 27.
Dalante Jerome Bell, 22, of Anaheim who was not a student, was arrested and charged for assault with intent to commit rape, NBC reported.
The Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN) says that an American is sexually assaulted every 68 seconds.
It also estimates that more than half (55 percent) of sexual assaults occur at or near the victim’s home, while about 15 percent occur in public open spaces.
It said that one in six American women has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape in her lifetime and that nearly half of victims (48 percent) were sleeping, or carrying out another activity at home.
