Brooklyn Man Finds Escaped Inmate Hiding In Apartment: 'He's Been Sitting Behind My Chair For Three Hours'
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- A Brooklyn man says an unusual bump in a sheet over his weaving kit led to him coming face-to-face with a prisoner who escaped custody.
Fear was still written all over Terry Pierson's face as he told CBS2's Cory James about the moment he locked eyes with a suspect hiding inside his apartment.
"I grabbed my flashlight, moved the sheet and there's a face looking back at me. He's been sitting behind my chair for three hours," Pierson said. "I went running that way for the police that I knew were in the backyard, hollering, 'He's in there, he's in there.'"
Police say the intruder was a prisoner who escaped federal custody Wednesday afternoon. It happened around 4:30 p.m. on 26th Street in Sunset Park.
Video shows authorities walking through nearby businesses looking for the suspect.
But he was down the block, hopping fences, according to Stefanie Tatsis, and racing towards her home.
"He was already on our porch, so I grabbed the meat cleaver and I chased him off the house. He jumped over and he started doing his jumping over each yard to try to find his escape," Tatsis said.
He slipped into Pierson's home through a cracked back door, crouching under a sheet next to a weaving machine and managing to avoid police, who, Pierson says, were feet away.
"The police came through, searched, one of the sets had the dog with them and everything," he said.
But the meeting with Pierson forced the runaway inmate out, and neighbors say officers were close by.
"As soon as he came out the basement, there was two officers waiting," one man said.
Authorities are not releasing much information about the suspect, only saying he was being transported to the Metropolitan Detention Center from court when he managed to escape a vehicle.
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