Photos have shown the terrifying moment a woman climbed on the roof to hide from an intruder who was just a few feet behind her.

Back in September 2014, Melora Rivera was left in utter shock after an intruder kicked down her front door in Venice, California.

Rivera was in bed at the time of the incident and all the commotion led to her jumping out of her safe place and onto the roof.

She managed to crawl out of the window and away from the oncoming intruder.

Melora Rivera told CBS News: “He managed to break one of these panels and reach in to unlock the door. Once I saw him in the house, I knew that we both couldn’t be there. I knew that I didn’t want to have a confrontation with him of any sort, you know, not knowing what his intention was.”

The woman climbed on the roof (TonyVera)

On her way to the roof, Rivera was able to grab her phone and call 911 as the intruder, who was later named as Christian Hicks, allegedly pursued her.

After she had got through to a dispatcher on the other side, Rivera thought the best plan of action was to hide under an eave – and that certainly worked well for her.

However, that didn’t mean it wasn’t a scary experience for the woman based in California.

She added: “The drop is, I would guess, more than 20 feet. So there was no safely jumping off the roof or coming down from the roof at that point.

“It was my biggest fear was that he was going to be forced by the cops to come hide in basically the same place I was hiding.”

Local authorities have since said police were able to get to Rivera less than two minutes after they’d been dispatched, meaning she got out of danger fairly quickly.

Alexandria Thompson witnessed the whole commotion, as Rivera was helped off the roof by the fire brigade who were also called out to the scene.

The intruder broke into the woman’s while she was asleep (Venice 311)

Also speaking to CBS, the bystander said: “I saw this guy this morning in handcuffs. I’ve seen him in my yard. I called the police.”

Hicks was originally detained but police was forced to let him go after the individual who called the cops in the first place declined to identify him in person.

Rivera has since spoken out about homelessness in the local area and how she feels that needs to be tackled to prevent similar situations from occurring.

“I think it’s very obvious for most of us who live around here, when someone seems to be suffering from a mental illness, and to continue to let these people walk around without offering them assistance, to protect them and us,” she added.

A Florida woman was sentenced to more than a decade behind bars after making a key mistake as she attempted to hire a hitman to kill her husband.

Dalia Dippolito was convicted in 2017 of solicitation of first-degree murder after claiming she was ‘5,000 percent sure’ she wanted to her husband Michael Dippolito, who she had only recently married, to die.

The conviction came almost 10 years after Dippolito attempted to hire the hitman in 2009.

When Dippolito met up with the man she believed she would be carrying out the murder, she discussed various plots as to how it could be done.

The hitman then suggested he would kill her husband at their shared home and make it look like a burglary gone wrong.

On August 5 2009, Dippolito came home to find what she thought was a real crime scene of her then-husband’s murder.

Little did she know, she’d made a key mistake when it came to finding the person who would end her husband’s life.

ABC News

Unbeknownst to Dippolito, instead of a hitman, she had told an undercover police officer that she wanted her then-husband Michael Dippolito murdered.

The interaction was captured on camera – as was Dippolito’s reaction when she arrived at the fake crime scene and officers told her that Michael was dead.

In reality, he was very much alive and had simply been removed from the home.

The footage of Dippolito’s interaction with the undercover officer went viral after it was made public, and Dippolito even attempted to cover up what had happened by claiming it was a stunt for reality TV.

In the video, she could be seen calling for her husband of six month’s death and agreeing to pay the supposed hitman $7,000 to do it.

After Dippolito was caught, circuit Judge Glenn Kelley said she acted in a ‘cold and calculated manner’ and cited additional evidence that she may have been manipulating two other men to this end.

ABC News

“This particular crime was committed not in an unsophisticated way, but in a sophisticated way in a calculated fashion,” Kelley said.

“There was a plan put in place by Dalia Dippolito to kill Mike Dippolito.”

Prosecutors speculated that Dippolito wanted her ex-husband dead so that she could receive his assets and savings.

Craig Williams, a prosecutor, described her as ‘a master manipulator’ and said she had to be locked up for the good of society.

While it was initially argued that Dippolito should have received a 30-year sentence, it was reduced to 16 years due of her good behavior while she underwent house arrest.

Chilling footage shows a convicted murderer explaining why she killed her ‘best friend’.

Last year, Denali Brehmer admitted to first-degree murder after killing her friend Cynthia Hoffman in June 2019 near Thunderbird Falls in Chugiak, Alaska.

As per the Alaska Department of Law, Brehmer made the guilty plea after stating a man on the internet promised her $9 million for photographs and videos of her committing murder.

Brehmer was in a relationship with Darin Schilmiller, who claimed he was a multimillionaire but was instead living in his grandparents’ basement in Indiana.

Denali Brehmer and David Scott in a new episode of Court TV’s Interview With a Killer (COURTTV)

Authorities say the pair planned a series of crimes in exchange for cash, including the ‘rape and murder of someone in Alaska’.

Alaska men Kayden McIntosh and Caleb Leyland were also sent down for second-degree murder after helping Brehmer murder her friend.

The group went on to trick their victim into coming to Thunderbird Falls, saying that they were going on a hiking trip before they shot her.

Hoffman’s body was then dumped into the Eklutna River.

Earlier this year, Brehmer was sentenced to 99 years in prison for the murder of her friend.

The tragic story is the focus of Court TV’s Interview With a Killer newest episode, with Brehmer herself explaining why she murdered Hoffman.

She told host David Scott: “Initially, when we all came up with it, I agreed and said yeah because I was mad at her and she was mad at me and I was just over her s***.”

Brehmer spoke about an argument she had with Hoffman about another man named Zack.

Denali Brehmer is serving 99 years behind bars (COURTTV)

“I wanted to make amends, I did want to make amends but she needed payback for what she did with Zack,” Brehmer continued.

The convicted killer went on to state the murder is ‘on me’, though wasn’t clear on whether she wanted to actually murder her friend or just scare her.

She said she was ‘somewhere inbetween’ kidding and being serious when she set out to murder Hoffman.

She later added: “I wanted her to pay for what she did but I didn’t want to kill her. I wanted to leave a lasting impression on her.”

Former FBI agent Brad Garrett and TV host David Scott will be unpicking the case in the new episode of Interview with a Killer, which airs tonight at 8pm ET on Court TV.

They reveal Brehmer was ‘no naive, unwitting victim of a bad online influence’, with Scott adding in the show: “It’s not clear to me who was the predator and who was the prey in this case of catfishing.”

A woman made a horrifying discovery after surviving a malfunctioning parachute on a skydiving jump.

Experienced skydiver Victoria Cilliers was undertaking a parachute jump on Easter Sunday 2015.

The jump had been a gift from her husband Emile Cilliers.

Victoria had been going through a difficult period with her husband after catching him several lies, though he had denied all of them.

Despite that, Victoria had seen the gift of a parachute jump as a peace offering and a way for them to move forward.

However, it turned out to be anything but.

Skydivers have both a regular parachute and a backup parachute in case the first one doesn’t open.

But on this occasion, things went horribly wrong as both the standard parachute and the backup parachute failed to open during the jump.

As a result, Victoria fell 4,000 feet before hitting the ground.

Emile Cilliers arrives at court for his trial in 2017. (Matt Cardy/Getty Images)

Her fall was witnessed by people on the ground, and they were left so convinced that she had been killed that they brought a body bag to the scene.

When they arrived they found that Victoria had sustained life threatening injuries including a broken pelvis.

But by some miracle, she had survived the fall.

Victoria assumed that the failures in her parachute had been the result of a terrible accident or oversight, but soon made a chilling discovery.

While she was recovering from her injuries the police visited her and explained that evidence suggested that her parachute had been tampered with.

The prime suspect in the case was Emile, who had previously tried to kill Victoria and the children they had together by leaving the gas on.

Fortunately Victoria smelled the leak and they were able to survive.

Victoria Cilliers told her story on ITV’s Loose Women. (ITV)

He had attempted to kill Victoria in order to cash in on a life insurance policy, and planned to use the money to start a new life with girlfriend.

For her part, his girlfriend had been led to believe that he and Victoria were separated.

Victoria became suspicious of Emile’s behavior, which became increasingly concerning.

This included disappearing for long periods, Victoria discovering emails from a sex club on the family computer, and one of Victoria’s friends saying that he had sent inappropriate messages to her 16-year-old daughter.

In the end, Emile was convicted of two counts of attempted murder and given a life sentence with a minimum term of 18 years in prison.

The story of Emile’s attempt to kill Victoria later became the subject of a 2018 ITV documentary entitled The Parachute Murder Plot. Victoria also released a memoir, I Survived, detailing her story in 2020.