‘Meet crazy with crazy’: Mom chases home intruder away with stick

PORTLAND, Ore. (KPTV/Gray News) - An Oregon mother of two is sharing her story after a man allegedly broke into her home and threatened to kill her entire family. The suspect was later arrested after hitting a police officer in the head with a rock, authorities say.

Amanda Materi Brown was at home with her two children Thursday in Portland’s Overlook neighborhood. She was watching a movie in bed around 11 p.m. when she heard a strange noise coming from inside the house.

“He was screaming really loudly... (and you) couldn’t really understand except ‘I’ll kill you. I’ll kill everyone’ was really obvious,” Materi Brown said.

She found a man, later identified by the Portland Police Bureau as 35-year-old Timothy Reed, standing inside her home by her sliding glass door. He was holding the lid to her metal trash can in one hand and an unknown object in the other.

Materi Brown says she immediately decided to confront him.

“Meet crazy with crazy is really what I thought,” she said.

She grabbed the stick that she keeps by her bed and chased Reed out of her home.

“I just went for him,” she said. “I completely just started swinging the stick at him, and he started backing up out of the house, which was ideal.”

A neighbor’s Ring camera captured audio of the confrontation, in which you can hear Materi Brown shouting at Reed. Once she chased the suspect away, she called 911.

Police found Reed at Overlook Park and say he ran from officers, leading them to a footbridge along Going Street. When an officer approached Reed to arrest him, police say the suspect hit the officer in the head with a softball-sized rock. The confrontation was captured on police body camera footage.

Reed was booked on several charges, including first-degree burglary, second-degree assault and assaulting a police officer.

Materi Brown says she and her family are relieved that he’s in custody but still shaken up.

“We’re OK,” she said. “You know, bad things happen in life, and we’re not going to let it make us afraid.”

Police say the officer who was hit with the rock has been released from the hospital and cleared to return to duty.

According to court documents, Reed was arrested last Monday for allegedly exposing himself to children at Blue Lake Park. The documents also state he threatened to kill the officer that responded to the scene.

“Deputy Farmer reports that he asked Reed why he’d been naked in front of children in the park, and Reed made rambling statements about ‘being told to do it by God...’ and other nonsensical remarks,” the court documents read. “Deputy Farmer asked Reed if he knew that there had been children in close proximity to him while he was naked, and he admitted that he knew but didn’t see a problem with it.”