A terrorized Bronx woman has armed herself with a pair of pit bulls in a desperate effort to defend herself from an unhinged career criminal who keeps breaking into her home — but remains on the streets.
Beauty salon owner Itesha Hairston said she’s petrified that 33-year-old Jarrell Coburn is stalking her after the vagrant broke into her home three times in under 10 days last month, but keeps getting a slap on the wrist due to a soft-on-crime court system that won’t lock him up.
In fact, Coburn, who has at least nine unsealed busts on his rap sheet, tried to bust in again on April 9 — just nine days after he was last nabbed inside her Longwood ground-floor apartment.
“He really think this is his apartment,” Hairston, 47, told The Post. “He really thinks he lives here. This guy is very, very dangerous. He just won’t stop. The guy won’t stop. I don’t know this guy from anywhere.
“Something’s really wrong with this dude,” she added. “That’s why I got my sister’s dogs. The law won’t do anything to protect me. I’ve got to be protected somehow.”
Coburn, whose past arrests include charges that he assaulted and spat on NYPD cops, has five open cases in the Bronx, including three for allegedly breaking into Hairston’s apartment.
The woman’s nightmare began on March 21, when she was upstairs in a neighbor’s apartment, heard loud banging from below — and dashed down only to come face to face with Coburn, she said.
“So I run downstairs and he runs out of the building,” she said. “But before he ran out of the building, he pulled a gun on me. So I run back upstairs and he runs out of the building and I called the cops.”
Coburn was back on March 27, this time allegedly busting into Hairston’s home while she was at her friend’s apartment — and running her sink until it flooded the boiler room below.
“The landlord came and said, ‘Someone’s in your apartment.’ I said, ‘No one’s there. Only you’ve got the key and I’ve got the key.’ He said, ‘No, somebody’s there.’ I called the cops again and they arrested him that night.”
Hauled into court, Coburn was charged with menacing, weapons possession, criminal mischief and harassment in the March 21 incident, and with criminal trespassing in the March 27 case.
The Bronx District Attorney’s Office asked during the March 28 court proceedings that he be held on $5,000 cash bail or a $15,000 bond, but the judge released him without bail, prosecutors said.
Cops never recovered the weapon allegedly used in the first break-in.
Two days later, he was allegedly back at Hairston’s apartment.
“I unlock my door and there he is,” she recalled. “He goes, ‘Get the f–k out of here! This is my apartment,’ and slammed the door. He almost cut my fingers off.
“I just ran and I called the cops and they blocked every exit that he could run out of and had to knock the door down to get him and arrest him,” Hairston said.
Back in court on March 31, the judge ordered an order of protection but released Coburn without bail again — largely because the criminal trespassing charges he faced are not eligible for bail under the state’s lenient 2019 criminal justice reforms.
Coburn has not been arrested again — but Hairston said her nightmare didn’t end there.
“He tried again [on April 9] but the super had nailed the window,” she told The Post.
That’s when she decided to borrow Prince and Seymour, her sister’s pit bulls, for protection.
“I don’t know this dude from nowhere,” she said. “Either lock him up or I’m going to move. He’s in a state where he could really hurt somebody. You climb up someone’s window and climb in — you could rape me.
“People like him should be locked away and never let out,” Hairston added. “He could do it to anybody and eventually the outcome will be very, very bad.”
Coburn’s public defender lawyer could not be reached for comment.
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