A mom and daughter say they awoke to a loud bang and found an apparently intoxicated man crashing through the ceiling into their apartment in Houston this week.
Desiree Malone and her daughter woke to a frightening crashing noise Tuesday around 4 a.m. and were horrified to find a strange man dangling through a hole in the ceiling from the attic.
“When I turned the light on, there was a man hanging from the attic, holding onto the beam so that he wouldn’t fall all the way through to our apartment,” Malone told Fox 26 Houston.
“I screamed and yelled like, ‘Who are you?’ and ‘What are you doing?’” she added, saying the man appeared to be “out of his mind” and intoxicated.
Malone said the man appeared disoriented and mumbled his words before pulling himself back up into the attic, where she said it sounded like he was talking to someone, according to the report.
In the moments after the incident, Malone and her daughter were separated as she called the police for help and her daughter ran back to her room to get dressed.
It was not immediately clear how the man got into the attic. Malone told the news station that she and a neighbor had been hearing odd noises from their attics for about two months before the incident, but neither suspected that a person was responsible.
The Harris County Sheriff’s Office said they arrested a man in connection with the incident on criminal mischief charges. Authorities did not release his name, but said he appeared intoxicated.
The sheriff’s office has not released its official report on the arrest.
While staff repaired the ruptured ceiling at Malone’s apartment, she says she no longer feels safe in her home and is looking to move out.
“I just want some kind of help from this apartment,” she said.
