A 63-year-old woman grabbed a burglar less than half her age after she found him in her home and made him wait for the police, according to reports.
Linda Carr returned to her home in Center Harbor, New Hampshire, Saturday to find the door jambs had been pried off. She entered the house and found a man walking out of her bedroom with a backpack, police said.
He tried to walk past her, but she grabbed him and made him empty his pockets, which contained her jewelry and prescription medication.
Police arrived minutes later and arrested the suspect.
The reported police said that Carr had recognized the suspect and later realized she knew him and his family when he was a young child.
Carr told the paper that the courage to tackle the burglar "just kicked in."
"When he came out I said 'who are you?' He told me and it turned out to be a false name," she told the Union Leader.
"I grabbed his backpack and threw it on the floor, then he tried to walk past and I grabbed him by the collar," she added. "He was tall and thin. I'm short and chubby."
"We've had quite a few burglaries, and I thought, 'it's not going to happen this time,'" she said.
'Remorseful,' 'embarrassed'
Carr told WMUR-TV that she said to the man "You sit there and stay there and don't you move." He replied, "'I won't."
Her dog hid under the bed during the incident, the Union Leader said.
Carr told the paper that she had been unable to sleep for several days afterward and was thinking of getting a bigger dog.
She added, however, that she thought she'd "do it again" in similar circumstances.
"I think I just lucked out that he was as cooperative as he was," Carr told the paper.
Center Harbor Police Chief Mark Chase told the paper that the suspect was also "cooperative" with officers after arrest.
"He was remorseful at the time. I think he was embarrassed," Chase told the paper.
Authorities said 29-year-old Richard Royea was arraigned on a burglary charge and released on $25,000 bail.