By Adele Suliman
Marjorie Perkins, 87, was fast asleep and home alone when she awoke to a male intruder looming over her bed, threatening to attack her.
"He said, 'I'm going to cut you,'" Perkins, a former primary school teacher living in Brunswick, Maine, told local outlet the Times Record of the attack last week. "I thought to myself, 'If he's going to cut, I'm going to kick.' So I jumped into my shoes.
"He grabbed me by the shoulders and pushed me against the wall and so forth," she told News Center Maine in a separate interview. So she grabbed a nearby chair, she said, "and I kept hitting him."
"I was hollering for help out the window," she told the Times Record, adding that no one heard her. "He kept punching me and pushing me," she said, adding that the intruder punched her in the forehead and bruised it.
Then, he seemingly tired and made for the kitchen, where she offered him a snack. "I kept saying, 'You need to get out. You need help,'" she told the Times Record.
"He said he was awfully hungry and hadn't had anything to eat for quite a while. And 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."
While he was eating, she dialled 911 on her rotary phone, she said. The intruder left her home before authorities arrived, but a police dog tracked him down shortly after and took him into custody, she said.
Perkins told the Times Record she recognised the intruder when he mowed her lawn as a young child 10 years ago, and estimated him to be 17 years old.
"He did a darn good job," Perkins said of his mowing. "I hope he gets help."
Brunswick police have not released the attacker's identity or age. But in an email on Wednesday, Brunswick Police Chief Scott Stewart confirmed media reports of the attack, as well as reports that the intruder faces charges for burglary, criminal threatening, assault and consuming liquor as a minor.
Perkins told the Times Record that he had a water bottle full of alcohol, a claim The Washington Post could not independently verify.
Perkins told both outlets she believes the intruder entered her home by shifting an air conditioning unit near a window to break in.
But she said she doesn't want any sympathy.
She told News Center Maine: "Don't sit and cry about it."