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Man sneaked into apartments in the Central West End and tried to break down a woman’s door

"You have to have some sort of way to protect yourself because you can't always depend on people, no matter how good of a situation you may be in or how safe your building you may be," she said.

ST. LOUIS — A man sneaked into the Citizen Park apartments in the Central West End Sunday morning and tried to break down a woman’s door.

Emily Thayer moved to the complex a few months ago because of its prime location and security. There’s controlled access to the building, and there’s supposed to be an around-the-clock guard.

But around 1 a.m. Sunday, a loud pounding noise woke her up.

“I get up from my bed, I look out, I see the man — the intruder — trying to break into my apartment,” she said.

She recalled he was trying to break down her door and her neighbor Andrew's, too.

"I see Andrew with the gun to the intruder's head and he's trying to appease him, trying to calm him down,” Emily said.

The neighbor she'd never met before took action while Emily tried to call their 24/7 security for help.

“At this point, I'd called the security desk a couple of times and there was no answer,” she said.

It turns out the security guard wasn’t there. It was Andrew who finally got the intruder to leave.

"I was very thankful that he had some self-defense. I don't know what would have happened otherwise,” Emily said.

Citizen Park management emailed people who live there Monday, letting them know what happened. They say an intoxicated man followed a resident into the building, and an arrest has been made.

They also apologized to Emily.

"The security guard did end up getting fired,” Emily said.

But she said that's not the only solution to a problem any of us can face.

"You have to have some sort of way to protect yourself because you can't always depend on people, no matter how good of a situation you may be in or how safe your building you may be,” she said.

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