WINDSOR, ONT. -- A “nightmare come true” is how the victims of two overnight home invasions describe their experience.
“I wake up around 2:30 a.m., to a cold hand pressed against my cheek and a man leaning over me trying to get on my bed,” said Sophia Maniscalco.
On Thursday morning Maniscalco was sleeping when she says a man broke into her Parent Avenue home.
“I grabbed him and I screamed who are you and he ran down the stairs within five seconds,” she said. “After that I screamed there’s someone in the house. But at that point, he was already gone. And I found out that he had already been in both my nieces' rooms first before coming to mine.”
Maniscalco lives with her sister, Tonya Marriott, and her five children.
Marriott says she is disturbed about what happened Thursday morning.
“It’s my babies. It’s the worst nightmare come true,” she said. “The worst part of it for me was that I didn’t know he was in my house until she started to scream. I didn’t know. That haunts me.”
Police were called in to investigate.
A few hours later, officers were then called to a home in the 700 block of Elliott Street East.
“I heard the front door open and I heard someone walk into the living towards the stairs and up the stairs,” said homeowner Keesha Wrights.
Wrights tells CTV News she couldn’t believe her eyes.
“I peeked my eye open and I seen this skinny tall man standing in the doorway and I jumped up and said who are you and he ran down the stairs and flew open my door and ran across the street,” she said.
Both victims provided a suspect description to police.
Officers believe both incidents involved the same suspect and he was identified.
Just before 5:30 p.m. Thursday, investigators from the Major Crime Unit found and arrested the suspect without incident in the 900 block of Marentette Avenue.
Thirty-six-year-old Faton Miftari of Windsor faces charges of break and enter, sexual assault and fail to comply with release.
“We were all so tired it just so happened we went to sleep without locking the front door,” Wright said.
Both Maniscalco and Wright say you can never be too careful.
“It was definitely a scary incident,” Wright said. “Always lock your doors. Never want to have that experience again.
“Triple check your locks. You can never be too safe,” Maniscalco added. “Home invasions do happen and it happened to me, even though I would never have expected it.”