London - It sounds like the plot of a Hollywood action movie.
A masked knifeman bursts into a teenager’s bedroom, binds him with cable ties and threatens to kill him.
But instead of freezing with fear, 19-year-old film studies student George Zelonka said he was not to be “messed with” and fought the raider off – with his umbrella.
He says he burst free from the ties binding his hands together before chasing the would-be robber away. The A-level student said he had been revising for his exams at his £5-million (R109m) family home in Hampstead, north London when he was confronted by the intruder wearing a “flesh-coloured” mask and screaming: “I’m going to kill you.”
After tying Mr Zelonka’s hands, the raider apparently forced him to lie on the floor and waved a nine-inch blade in his face.
But the teenager said “adrenaline kicked in” when he thought the assailant was going to suffocate him with plastic bags. He claims he freed himself and turned on the raider with an umbrella, shouting: “You have no idea who you’re messing with.”
“It could be my paranoia from watching too many Quentin Tarantino movies but I heard him going for plastic bags and something inside me just said, ‘get up’,” he told the London Evening Standard.
“He was backing out, jabbing his knife at me to keep me away.”
“In the end he actually asked me, ‘can I go now?’. I grabbed the umbrella and followed him out. It’s quite heavy and I thought I could do some damage with it so I kept chasing him.” Despite the drama, CCTV footage from the house’s security system captured only the student with an umbrella in his hand.
Zelonka says he ran barefoot and dressed in just a T-shirt for around 100 yards (91 metres) before the raider reached nearby Hampstead Heath.
The teenager’s property developer father Paul Goldstein said he knew the incident “wasn’t a prank”, adding: “He didn’t let himself become a victim.”
“He turned the tables whereas most kids his age, even men my age, would have had a heart attack.”
Police were called and launched a search involving three patrol cars, two mounted officers and a detective but found no sign of their suspect.
Daily Mail