Horror true story behind picture of actress hiding on roof with intruder looking for her
In September 2014, Melora Rivera was left terrified when an intruder kicked down her front door in California.
The actor had been in bed at the time, wearing just a flannel shirt and ended up being the subject of a famous photo.
Pretty creepy to look at, the viral snap shows the then-29-year-old crouching on the roof of her home, desperately hiding from a man, later named as Christian Hicks, who appeared to be looking for her.
Rivera herself felt like she’d ended up in a real-life horror film and called 911, with police arriving just in the nick of time for her to escape any danger.
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She’d only been living in the Venice home for roughly three weeks when the homeless man broke in and an area blogger snapped the photos.
“He managed to break one of these panels and reach in to unlock the door,” she told CBS News at the time.
“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."
She also told the Daily Mail that she felt as though she was ‘becoming the plot to a horror movie’.
“This guy had kicked my front door in, chased me up to my bedroom and followed me out the window on to the roof; all I could do was hide,” Rivera explained.
She recalled seeing his hand ‘coming inside’ the door to unlock it and deciding that she needed to escape.
“I literally crawled through the window, and as the intruder steps one foot in my house, I step one foot on the roof,' she said.
“But he didn't stop there. He came up the steps to my bedroom, and as I’m crawling around the roof I see his head pop out through the window. The next thing he’s on the roof with me.”
Local authorities said police were able to get to the actor less than two minutes after they’d been dispatched.
Rivera didn’t know what she’d have done otherwise as she estimated that the drop was over 20 feet, so she had no way of ‘safely jumping off the roof’ as she cowered under the ledge, hiding from Hicks.
“It was my biggest fear was that he was going to be forced by the cops to come hide in basically the same place I was hiding,” Rivera added to CBS.
The man was immediately arrested by police as emergency services rescued the woman from the roof.
Court records viewed by the Daily Mail show Hicks received a plea deal and was sentenced to three years in jail.
He was released and reportedly fell back into criminal ways, having had a number of arrests in the years since.
In 2021, he was reportedly arrested on rape, sodomy, sexual penetration with force and kidnapping charges.
And then in 2023, he was sentenced to 37 years in prison for egregious crimes with records showing that he will be eligible for parole in September 2043.
Topics: True Crime, Celebrity News
Jess Battison