West Mifflin woman who awoke to find intruder in her new house has warning for other home buyers

PITTSBURGH — Alexis Battle feels like justice was not served in her case.

The West Mifflin woman was in court this week after a man who entered her home in the middle of the night, and refused to leave, was found not guilty in Allegheny County Common Pleas Court.

Now, Battle has a warning for anyone who recently bought a home.

Last November, Battle and her husband Brice, bought a house in West Mifflin on a dead-end street.

Less than three weeks later, Brice was out of town and Alexis was sleeping up stairs with her one-year-old baby. She heard tires in the driveway just after midnight, and texted her husband, who said it wasn’t him.

“She’s like, are you serious?” Brice Battle said of the conversation that night between he and his wife. “I said, ‘I’m real serious. I think you need to grab your firearm.’ ”

Home surveillance video shows a man, approximately 6 feet 2 inches tall, standing outside the home. He tried to open the garage with a code and when that didn’t work, he used a key to open the front door.

“I came downstairs, grabbed my weapon, approached my front door and I saw a man standing in my foyer and it wasn’t my husband. Of course I was terrified,” Alexis Battle said.

She asked him to leave, telling him the house had been sold. He told her he was the son of the former residents and knew nothing about the sale, and proceeded to walk into the kitchen.

Alexis Battle continuously asked him to leave, and according to the criminal complaint, he got mad and threw the garage door opener at her.

Police arrested the man on felony trespassing charges. At his trial this week, Judge Alexander Bicket found the man not guilty.

“This could have ended so many different ways,” Alexis Battle said. “I could have shot him. The nurse in me spared his life. He got lucky.”

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