Melora Rivera, Los Angeles Actress, Forced To Hide On Roof When Intruder Broke Into Her Home

A Los Angeles actress had the scare of her life when a homeless man broke into her house on Wednesday morning. Melora Rivera managed to escape from the home intruder by crawling out of a second-story window onto her roof and call the police while hiding. “He managed to break one of these panels and reach in to unlock the door,” Rivera told CBS Los Angeles. “Once I saw him in the house, I knew that we both couldn’t be there. I knew that I didn’t want to have a confrontation with him of any sort, you know, not knowing what his intention was.”

The man was identified as Christian Hicks, 29, a well-known homeless person in the area, who appeared to be mentally unstable. At the time of the intrusion, Rivera said she was in bed, and when she realized what was going on, she managed to quickly grab her phone to call 911 and run to the roof. What she didn’t expect was Hicks following her. Thankfully, police got to the scene in less than two minutes to control the situation. The whole scenario was caught on pictures by a bystander, Alexandria Thompson, who runs neighborhood watch website Venice311.org.

“As I come around the corner and I look up and there's this half naked girl cowering underneath the awning and the police have their guns drawn,” Thompson told the Daily Mail. “I stood there with some other residents and we thought she was the burglar up on the roof not listening to the officers' commands.” She continued, “I took my camera phone out and started taking pictures, then all of a sudden this horrifying dark figure pops up on the other side of the roof and everybody on the other side of the street was like, ‘oh no,’ it was the scariest Jack in the box, freak show, weird situation.”

“At that point we realize he's the burglar and the girl is the victim freaking out. The cops keep him at bay and get the girl safely off the roof and the guy down and in cuffs.” According to Rivera, her biggest fear in all of this was that “he was going to be forced by the cops to come hide in basically the same place I was hiding.” Meanwhile, Rivera is keeping her calm after the incident and is clear on what the problem is: “I think it’s very obvious for most of us who live around here, when someone seems to be suffering from a mental illness, and to continue to let these people walk around without offering them assistance, to protect them and us. That, I think, is the heart of the problem.”

Hicks was charged with burglary and his bail has been set at $50,000.