SUNNY ISLES BEACH, Fla. – Seventy-six-year-old Cynthia Evans did not mince words when she said what should happen to the man who police said broke into her Sunny Isles Beach apartment while nude and severely beat her over the weekend.
“You gotta stay in jail, because you’re a maniac,” she told Local 10 News in an exclusive interview Wednesday.
Police said Marco Tulio Russi, 43, attacked Evans, a cancer patient undergoing chemotherapy, on Sunday.
“He kept on hitting me and hitting me and slamming me in the ground,” Evans said. “He was choking me.”
The attack left her bloodied and bruised.
“He beat me up very badly,” Evans said. “I’m all bruised up. I can’t breathe. My head is killing me and my body and my ribs and everything is killing me badly.”
Russi, police said, lives in the woman’s building on North Bay Road.
“I don’t know where we came from,” Evans said. “I don’t know what happened here, that he was around in our building.”
Police said Russi, while naked, was trying to break into other apartments as well.
Evans said she’s grateful to be alive.
“Thank God I’m alive,” she said. “That’s what everybody said: ‘Thank God you’re here.’ Yes. Yes. Oh, my ribs are killing me.”
Evans, who suffered a concussion during the ordeal, told Local 10 News she hopes Russi never gets out of jail.
“They gotta do something about this, having a maniac coming around,” she said. “This is no good.”
Russi remained behind bars facing several charges as of Wednesday.