The boogeyman is real — and he broke into a New Jersey boy’s bedroom, cleaned out his piggy bank and hid under his bed with a knife, cops said.
Darla Donohue told The Post she heard a rattling noise coming from 6-year-old Joshua’s bedroom at about 4 a.m. Thursday in their Fair Lawn home.
Thursday was a special night in the Donohue household because Joshua got to sleep with his mom.
“Joshua doesn’t usually sleep with me but he likes to when my husband is away, Sometimes I say yes, sometimes I say no.”
“It’s a good thing you said yes,” Joshua told his mom.
The rustling sound was homeless man Kenneth Webb, 56, shaking Joshua’s cherished change out of his ceramic piggy bank. Donohue quietly got out of her bed, leaving her son fast asleep there, and ran to the bathroom.
“When you hear a noise and you wake up and you think, ‘What do I do?’ I never felt my heart pounding so much.”
Donohue called the cops, who found Webb hiding under Joshua’s bed clutching a knife with some stolen change and a jewelry box.
Webb used the knife to cut through an unlocked window’s screen to get into the home, police said. Donohue said she heard the cops yell, “Get up,” to Webb before they dragged him out of her house in handcuffs.
She then recognized the burglar — he was a troubled man who used to live next door with his mother.
The burglar’s mother, who declined to give her name, said her son has not been living with her for a long time.
“My heart goes out to them,” she told The Post. “It’s scary. I’m scared.”
“He always had issues,” the neighbor said. “He’s not a bad guy, just troubled.”
“He went for the piggy bank — that’s his mentality.”
Webb, who is a convicted felon, was charged with two counts of burglary and unlawful possession of a weapon.