Most New Yorkers would run for the door if they found a burglar in their bedroom — but this tough Brooklyn woman sized up the intruder and took him head-on.
Tiffany Chang, 27, was watching TV with her roommate in their apartment on Lorimer Street in Williamsburg Wednesday afternoon when she went to get her cellphone from her bedroom at around 3:40 p.m.
She was stunned to see a prowler in all black making his way onto the fire escape through a window with her new MacBook laptop in his arms.
“I asked him, ‘Are you f–king kidding me?’” said Chang, who also spotted her jewelry box on the fire escape. “He kind of smiled and was like, ‘Yeah,’ I guess, and then he kind of froze.”
Chang, a video producer who works in advertising, quickly sized up the crook, who had shoulder-length dreadlocks, and decided to go after him.
“He seemed disoriented. The look on his face wasn’t malicious; it was young and stupid. I thought for a second, ‘Does he have a weapon?’ ” she said. “I assessed the risk and figured I could make it.”
Chang and the thief had a tug-of-war for her laptop — and she won.
“We fought for a minute, and then finally I wrestled my laptop back from him,” she said, adding that the burglar then shoved her, causing her to fall backward onto her bedroom floor.
With a metal bar in hand, her roommate, Russell Pinke, barged into the bedroom after he heard Chang yell.
“He saw me and he smiled, and he probably thought, ‘I gotta get out of here’ when he saw a second person,” said Pinke, 27. The bandit then bolted down the fire escape, making off with Chang’s cellphone and several pieces of family heirloom jewelry, including two gold rings plus a diamond and sapphire necklace that her mother gave her.
“We started shouting really quickly out of the window like, ‘This guy is robbing us!’ ” said Chang, adding that she was “really bummed” about the stolen jewelry.
Once the crook got to the street, he looked up at Chang and smiled strangely, she said.
Pinke said this is the third time in five years that a burglar has gotten into the apartment from the fire escape on the side of the building.
Even though Chang suffered a sore neck and some bumps and bruises from the incident, it didn’t totally ruin her day.
“I have been running around the house saying, ‘I protected you!’ ” she said, pointing at Pinke. “I fought off a robber!”
Police are investigating.