The Daily Telegraph March 17, 2010 3:11AM
A HEAVILY pregnant woman dressed in only in her pyjamas ran screaming from her house, chasing a burglar she had just found lurking inside.
Beating her husband out the door, mother-of-two Tammy Matten hurtled down the street, keeping up her barefoot pursuit for more than 200m before the thief finally got away.
The scene, captured on security cameras outside the family's Hunter Valley home yesterday, looked almost comical.
But for Mrs Matten, 25, husband Peter and their children it was no laughing matter.
Mrs Matten, whose third child is due early next month, said she was acting purely on instinct when she gave chase.
"I walked out of the bedroom and he was standing right there. I started screaming and swearing at him. I didn't really have time to think about what I was doing but I'm not the type of person to back down," she said.
The tape shows the burglar and another man, both thought to be aged between 17 and 21, approach the Aberglassyn house about 2.50am. One retreats across the road to act as a lookout while the other breaks in.
The thief then spent more than 15 minutes creeping through the house, stealing items from the kitchen and venturing within a metre of Mr Matten's father -- asleep on a sofa-bed in the loungeroom -- to steal a pair of gloves from the couch.
The burglar emerges at 3.17am but returns half an hour later and, wearing the gloves he has just stolen, goes back for a second raid.
"It's just lucky they were thieves and not murderers because they could have easily wiped us all out," Mr Matten said.
With Mrs Matten in hot pursuit, the burglar fled in such a hurry that he left a shoe behind, stuck in mud outside the house.
Police hope the sneaker, together with the family's CCTV footage clearly showing the burglar's face, will help them quickly track down the culprit.
http://www.news.com.au/national/pregnant-mum-tammy-matten-chases-thief-from-her-home/story-e6frfkvr-1225841630344
