Like a scene from a horror movie — one that has played out more than 20 times now over the past three summers in south Etobicoke — she let out a blood-curdling scream that sent the intruder scurrying off into the darkness.
“It was terrifying,” a still shaken McCarthy said Saturday, hours after her encounter. “I just started screaming and screaming.”
The break-in at her home — one of two targetted shortly before 2 a.m. in the area of Browns Line and Lake Shore Blvd. W. — occurred less than 24 hours after an elderly woman had a similar rude awakening near Bloor St. W. and Royal York Blvd.
It’s not yet known if the man behind the latest incidents is the same serial intruder who has terrorized south Etobicoke residents during the summer months since 2012, often sexually assaulting women as they slept.
But McCarthy believes it must be him because the similarities are uncanny.
If so, then the serial intruder has now strayed from his usual hunting grounds — an area bounded by Islington Ave., Dundas St. W., The Queensway and Humber River.
McCarthy never imagined she could be next when she went to sleep Friday night, forgetting to lock the sliding glass doors to her back patio at her home — a mistake she won’t make again any time soon.
The woman, whose husband was asleep in the basement, awoke around 1:30 a.m. and squinted through the darkness at the shadowy figure standing within arm’s-length of her bed.
“I was in a daze and I looked and I’m going like, ‘Who’s there?’” McCarthy recalled.
The intruder wore a white mask over his face, possibly a bandana, and a red hoodie pulled up over his head.
“There was just slits, all I could see was his eyes,” McCarthy said. “He was just staring at me. It was scary.”
McCarthy screamed louder than she’s ever screamed in her life and the man fled out the back door, hopped a couple of fences and “was gone.”
“This guy was jumping fences like a gazelle,” she said.
McCarthy called 911 and Toronto police immediately flooded the area. The intense manhunt came up empty, once again, but it’s believed cops recovered a shoe that may belong to the intruder.
Police conducted a similar unsuccessful search early Friday after an elderly woman who lives about 9 km northeast of McCarthy scared off an intruder.
The serial intruder cops have been hunting since 2012 has often struck numerous times in a single night.
“It’s too soon to know if this is the same guy,” Const. Matthew McLeod, of 22 Division, said of the latest break-ins. “But every officer at our station is committed to finding whoever is responsible.”
McCarthy said her intruder snooped around her home before making his way to her bedroom and he stole two cellphones and a laptop, which was later found by police on her patio.
She believes the man went out of the house, left the computer outside and returned to her room, which is next to the patio doors.
“I’m lucky, if this is the guy who has been sexually assaulting people, that I didn’t get touched,” McCarthy said.
Investigators haven’t determined how the serial intruder chooses the homes he targets but McCarthy wonders if he’s stalking his prey rather than selecting victims at random.
“I have a feeling I was being watched,” she said.
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