A special education teacher in Ohio went through a shocking ordeal after a Zoom video conference with a child’s family was interrupted by a robbery.
Amanda Zupancic was at her Cleveland home alone at about 11 a.m. last month and was meeting virtually with a middle school student and his parents when a loud noise interrupted the conference.
“I heard a glass-shattering crash downstairs,” Zupancic recounted to News 5 Cleveland. “I was like, hold on, I think someone is breaking into my house, just joking. I didn’t think anyone would be breaking into my house in the middle of the day.”
She said she became aware of the seriousness of the situation when she noticed a man walking through her baby gate, knife in hand, and heading upstairs. “He started threatening me, yelling at me, calling me names. He grabbed me upstairs into my bedroom,” she said.
The ordeal took place while her Zoom meeting was happening. The family called 911 as the suspect, later identified as Charles Derosett, rifled through her belongings during the robbery.
“The teacher that teaches my son, somebody broke into her house, we saw it on the Zoom,” the father of the student attempted to explain to the 911 dispatcher. “I guess she heard the man say, ‘Get on the floor. I’m going to cut your f—ing throat.”
Zupancic, whose husband and 1-year-old child were out of the house, said she told Derosett that she would give him her car keys if she was allowed to go downstairs to retrieve them. She said Derosett agreed, and she went downstairs.
But instead of getting a pair of keys, Zupancic unleashed a pair of large dogs.
“When I reached for my keys, instead, I opened the gate. And I have a German shepherd and a Great Dane-boxer mix. So the German shepherd stood between myself and this guy, and the Great Dane-boxer mix went at him,” she said.
Zupancic then said she grabbed a pair of scissors and chased him out of her home and down her street while screaming for help and that she had been robbed. She said a contractor doing work on a neighbor’s house then intervened and tackled Derosett to the ground, holding him until law enforcement made it to the scene.
Derosett, a previously convicted felon, was charged with aggravated robbery and felonious assault.
