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Friday, May 24, 2013 | 3:59 p.m.

Updated: 12:12 a.m. Friday, Jan. 30, 2004 | Posted: 12:12 a.m. Friday, Jan. 30, 2004

Johnstown Home Invasion

You've heard of it happening in neighborhoods throughout the country and now it's happened in Johnstown, a local couple - targeted by men posing as water inspectors. How did a local couple made it through a potentially dangerous situation? Dan Charney was plowing a path through the snow when a man approached him, telling him he was with the Water Company and he needed to check the spickets in the cellar. What happened next will shock you. Mr. Charney says, "he come in ahead of me...headed for the furnace." He spoke to this man posing as someone from the water authority when his wife Lois came down the steps. The man's cell phone rang and he began speaking to a man in a foreign language -- and Lois started to realize something wasn't right so she raced upstairs. "I came up and went out into the kitchen and sure enough there was a man already in our kitchen," says Lois. She pushed him out the door and when she turned around she came face to face with his partner, but not backing down, Lois threatened to call the water company - and then, the unthinkable happened. "He got so mad at me and he started hollering at me and he said I told you to go out and turn that water on." He then raised his hand like he was going to hit her, but he picked the wrong woman to threaten. "I says, you sob I says you're in our house and you're not ordering me around. And I says you get the hell out of here. I'm not calling the Water Authority, I'm calling the police. And the man didn't take that threat lightly. "He took off down the cellar steps...I gotta go out to the car because I need some books." And he never came back, but even after reporting the incident to the police, the Charney's are still shaken up. "It's so scary to know...ordering you around like that." But now that it's happened they want to make sure you aren't the next victim. This wasn't the first incident -- another home not far from the Charney's - in East Taylor Township was targeted by two men of a similar description.

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