We have all been there before – you wake up early one morning and just want to enjoy a cup of coffee when you find a naked intruder trying to break into your house. Okay, that hasn’t happened to all of us, but it did happen to Pennelope Petersen in September 2018 when the elderly Florida woman found a man gyrating in a “lewd manner” on her back porch in nothing but his birthday suit.
‘I always look first,” Petersen told WFTV 9. “I opened the blinds and said, ‘Oh, hell, that’s not my cat.'”
But Petersen didn’t run back into her house and hide in fear. Instead, the retired law enforcement officer pulled out her dentures and yelled out what would become her rallying cry: “Grandma no Teeth!”
Photo courtesy of WFTV
The scene was enough to scare Axel Rivera, the would-be intruder, forcing him to run from Petersen’s Titusville, Fl. home, leaving his clothes behind at the scene. Rivera was later picked up by local police after they spotted him naked and wandering around a parking lot. When asked where he left his clothes, Rivera told police that they were stolen.
Petersen later explained that she was never frightened by Rivera, who she called “just a dumbass.”
Photo courtesy of Brevard County Sheriff’s Office
Even though Petersen is laughing the whole thing off, the Titusville Police Department still sees this as no laughing matter and proceeded with formal charges against the naked intruder.
“It could have been a very, very bad scene,” said Amy Matthews of Titusville Police. “The woman was victimized, not only having to have someone enter her home that’s not wanted in her home but also someone who was wearing no clothes.”
Rivera was booked on a count of exposing himself and burglary and is currently being held at the Brevard County Jail on $15,500 bond.
Rivera must have been pretty humiliated that morning after Petersen just sort of laughed him off and pulled out her teeth instead of running away in fear of a naked man trying to break into her home through the back door. But hats off to Petersen for being quick-witted enough to turn a potentially dangerous situation into one of the funnier stories to come out of Florida in recent months.
