INSIDE EDITION spoke to a couple whose terrifying confrontation with a home invader was caught on surveillance video.
It was a brutal home invasion and the homeowner's surveillance cameras caught the whole disturbing scene on tape.
Tom French and his girlfriend, Colleen Capalbo, were about to sit down for dinner at their home outside Detroit, when a man, dressed in a suit and baseball cap, approached their home and knocked on the door.
The homeowner answered the door, and the two have a chat on the front porch. The man asked Tom, who has a contracting business, for a job, but Tom felt something isn't quite right.
Tom told INSIDE EDITION, “Nothing seemed right. The conversation didn't go right. He couldn't tell me who sent him.”
Tom attempted to blow the man off by going inside and writing a contact number down for him, but when he opened the door to give it to him, the attacker forced his way in with a pistol.
“I tried to shut the door to push him back out and he forced his way in and at that point, he hit me with the pistol,” said Tom.
In the surveillance footage, blood could be seen on the side of Tom's face where he was hit with the gun.
INSIDE EDITION's Les Trent asked, "Were you afraid one of you guys might get shot?"
Tom said, "He kept pointing it in my stomach and I thought at any moment it would go off."
As they struggled, Colleen stepped in. She hit the intruder with a heavy glass jar filled with pasta, but the attacker just flung her across the room.
She told INSIDE EDITION, “I felt like we were going to fight and that was it. Either we could lay there and die or fight and go out trying.”
Colleen returned to the fierce fight and managed to wrestle the gun from the assailant's hands.
“I just grabbed it and wouldn't let it go until he let it go,” she said.
The family dog, Gracie, seemed to be completely useless in the dangerous situation. Tom has a total of three dogs, and not one so much as barked.
Trent jokingly said, “That one dog we saw on camera, he did a lot.”
Colleen said, “I won't leave him alone about that!"
Tom said, "They actually had the back gate and back door. They were flanking the area.”
Tom eventually reached into a box by the front door and grabbed a large pair of garden shears. He whacked the intruder over the head with the shears before dragging him outside.
Colleen remained inside and called 911, telling the dispatcher, “We're getting robbed! He came with a gun, he attacked us, I got the gun. Were bleeding!”
The home invader finally ran off in his pickup truck. He is still on the loose.
“I am going to get justice,” said Tom.
