NEWS

A 14-year-old Marysville, Wash., girl was in her bed one night when she woke to the sound of a creaking floor.  "I looked up at this man, and he came over to my bed and started choking me," Maren Bruun recalled.  "I was kicking the walls and trying to get away.  We wrestled on the floor.  I felt myself going unconscious."  Just then the girl's brother came to her rescue and scuffled with the home invader.  When the pair tumbled down the stairs, the children's father rushed out from his down-stairs bedroom with a gun.  After the father fired one round, the intruder pulled away from him and the son leaving his T-shirt and sweater in their hands and fleeing the property.  As it turns out, the man was an aquaintance of one of the son's friends and had been banned from entering the home only two days before the attack.  (The Herald, Everett, Wash.,4/16/00)