By Leslie Albrecht
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
UPPER WEST SIDE — Rosa Arenas says she has forgiveness in her heart for the would-be burglar who punched her in the face Tuesday afternoon — but she wants police to catch him as soon as possible so he doesn't hurt anyone else.
Arenas, 53, suffered a broken nose when she confronted a man in the hallway outside her apartment on West 81st Street between Columbus and Amsterdam avenues about 4:20 p.m. Tuesday.
Police believe the man, dressed in work clothes and an orange vest, snuck into the building by removing an air conditioning unit from a basement window and crawling in.
"He was wearing an orange traffic vest, so people assumed he was either a building worker or someone there to do work," a police source said. "What he was doing was working on a burglary."
Arenas ran into the man in the hall outside the basement apartment where she and her husband, the building's superintendents, live.
The man told Arenas he was in the building to check for leaks and that someone named "Mr. Gardner" had sent him. Arenas, who's been the building's super for seven years, had never heard of a Mr. Gardner.
She asked the man what company he was with and whether he had any identification.
"That's when he started punching me until I hit the floor," Arenas said. "I tried to get up, but I couldn't. It was really, really horrible. There was blood everywhere."
Nickel-sized drops of blood were still visible Wednesday on the floor where the suspected burglar beat Arenas.
She said the ordeal was "very painful and very frightening." As the man hit her, she worried he might rape her, she said.
She called out for help from "Mr. Jody," a ruse to make the burglar think there was someone nearby who could come help her.
The burglar ran away and Arenas dragged herself outside to the sidewalk, where she burst into shocked tears, she said.
Arenas said the man didn't seem threatening until the moment he punched her.
"I thought he was a person that would never hurt me," Arenas said. "He acted friendly to me. You can't trust these days. You can only trust God."
She added, "Truly I think God helped me. He could have killed me. I'm a Christian woman, that's why I don't feel hate for this guy."
Witnesses described the suspect as an African-American man in his late 30s, wearing blue work pants, a white T-shirt and an orange vest.
Arenas will meet with a police sketch artist and detectives are reviewing surveillance footage from the area, a police source said.
