PITTSBURGH — A woman called 911 Thursday after going to check on her neighbor and finding her at the bottom of a staircase in Pittsburgh’s Brookline neighborhood, the woman told Channel 11’s Courtney Brennan.
Edith Recchion told Brennan that she checks on her 69-year-old neighbor every day. She said she went over Thursday when she hadn’t seen the woman all day and noticed that it was raining and her neighbor’s car windows were down. Recchion said she went inside and found the woman hurt and the home ransacked.
"I went over, knocked (and there was) no answer. So I used my key and called for her, and I heard, ‘I'm down here.’ So I went to the kitchen and looked down the cellar steps, and there she was laying down," Recchion said. "And I just ran down there, and I said, ‘What happened?’ and she said, ‘A man.’ And I said, ‘What man?’ and she said, ‘I don't know.’ And I said, ‘Are you hurt real bad? and she said, ‘I don't know.’”
Recchion said her neighbor had recently placed an ad to sell some furniture and that people had been coming to see it in the last few days. Her neighbor was taken to Allegheny General Hospital with bruising on her body and head.
Pittsburgh police spokeswoman Sonya Toler said authorities determined that the woman had fallen down the steps herself.
“There was nothing criminal involved,” Toler said.
She made no comment about the home allegedly having been ransacked as Recchion had described it.