Teenager texts her mother from bathroom as burglar ransacks their Montclair home

Montclair police are crediting a quick-thinking 14-year-old girl with protecting herself and her 4-year-old niece when a burglar broke into her family’s home this week.

‘I was very scared. Not so much for myself but for Zoyee,” Savannah Jones told KTLA-TV Channel 5, referring to her niece.

It was about 3:30 p.m. Tuesday when police said Savannah heard someone knock on the door of the family’s home in the 10200 block of Monte Vista Avenue.

Savannah said she looked through the peephole and didn’t recognize the man on the other side.

The man jiggled the door knob. It was locked, Montclair police said.

Savannah grabbed her niece, ran upstairs into a bathroom and locked the door.

“Then I heard one or two more loud bangs. That’s when I realized he was in the house,” she said. “I could hear him going through my mom’s room. He came toward the door where we were hiding. I was just hoping he wouldn’t know we were in there.”

Afraid the burglar would hear her if she called 911, Savannah texted her mother instead.

“He is inside mom he’s gonna here me,” she wrote. “U call or come home or something mom.”

Savannah’s mother texted back that she had called a neighbor, who rushed over to help.

But the man had gotten away after ransacking two rooms, though he never found the girls, police said.

“Montclair police officers … including a K-9 officer, conducted an extensive search for the suspect, however he was not located and remains outstanding,” police said in a statement.

joseph.serna@latimes.com

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