WATERBORO — When a mother woke up to see a man in her house shining a flashlight in her face early Tuesday morning, she told him she had a gun and she wasn’t afraid to use it.

But the woman, whose two young children were with her in the home on Back Road, was able to initially talk the man – whom she said was drunk – outside, after she got her weapon. He came inside again, she wrote in a social media posting on the York County Sheriff ’s Office page, then deputies arrived and took him into custody.

York County Sheriff Bill King on Tuesday said the suspect, Timothy Normand, 35, did not threaten the woman or her children.

The woman said she recognized the man as a neighbor. She was sleeping, and her 6-year-old daughter was in bed with her when she woke up to a flashlight in her face at 12:30 a.m. Tuesday. Her 5-year-old son had been sleeping on the couch.

“I didn’t know who it was at first, I just jumped up and told him I have a gun and I’m not afraid to use it and you need to leave,” the woman said in the Facebook posting. “I realized who it was, a neighbor – our children go to school together.”

She said once she was able to talk the man outside, he went to the back of her yard. She was inside the home talking to police dispatchers on the phone when the man re-entered the home through the front door.

“He was bleeding everywhere, he had cut himself trying to peel back my back door,” the woman wrote. “He bled all over my house and told my children very strange things that they are still traumatized over. They were also terrified from all the blood.”

She praised the effort of law enforcement.

Neither the victim nor her children were physically injured.

King said deputies found Normand in the home, talking with the woman’s children and bleeding from the finger wound, which required stitches.

He was arrested and charged with criminal mischief and criminal trespass. Jailed on $500 cash bail, he was to make a first court appearance later today, the sheriff said.

The victim was the subject of some criticism on social media for not using her weapon.

“You had to be there to understand the circumstances; be thankful that you were not,” she wrote.

— Senior Staff Writer Tammy Wells can be contacted at 324-4444 (local call in Sanford) or 282-1535, ext. 327 or twells@journaltribune.com.

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