Police: Burglar wakes resident while petting her cat

SHORE ACRES (FOX 13) - Police said they arrested a man after his victim woke up to see him standing at the foot of her bed. When she screamed at him to leave, she says he first leaned down to pet her cat.

St. Petersburg police arrested 24-year-old Jasper Fiorenza and charged him with burglary of an occupied dwelling. Brittney Cline was home, asleep in her bed, when Fiorenza came into her Michigan Ave. NE home on November 20. 

"It takes away your sense of security and peace of mind," Brittney told FOX 13 News. "I could see him crouched down on the floor. He didn't look up at me. He was petting the cat."

And it was probably her cat that saved her, had the suspect had more nefarious plans. 

"The scariest thing to me is had the cat not jumped off the bed and woken me up when he realized there was somebody in the room how long would he have stood there staring at me? What was he thinking about doing and would I have woken up with some strange man on top of me in the middle of the night?" Brittney said.

Brittney said she was terrified by what happened, but she's glad Fiorenza is behind bars. He left enough evidence behind at Brittney's home for police to quickly identify and find him.

"I'm incredibly grateful that he didn't have the opportunity to do anything that night. That my daughter wasn't here that night and, most importantly, that he was dumb enough to leave a fingerprint and the police were able to catch him.," she said.