Disabled woman, 63, uses back scratcher to fend off wrench-wielding home intruder (VIDEO)

An Indiana woman armed with a back scratcher fought off a wrench-wielding home intruder Monday night.

Patty Kearney, 63, and her husband, Donald, were in their Marion home when around 9:30 p.m. a man donning a hockey mask and armed with a wrench burst into the residence. The crook demanded money and guns and threatened to tape the couple up. But Patty said no, the NBC-affiliate reports.

“I said, ‘No,'” Patty said. “And I looked at him and I said, ‘Do you have a gun?’ And he said, ‘No.’ And I don’t know what happened. I snapped.”

Patty, who suffers from COPD and is tethered to her oxygen tank, grabbed a nearby back scratcher and employed it as an improvised weapon. She engaged the suspect, who quickly wised up and fled.

But Patty continued to advance. She repeatedly struck him in the head and when he dropped the wrench, Patty picked it up and kept “bamming” him all the way out the back door.

“I said, ‘Not in my house, not in my house,’” Patty said, recounting the event. “And I boom, boom, boom. I just hit him in the head, hit him in the head, hit him until he got right there, and I hit him once more and he ran out the door.”

The suspect fled on foot, which is probably a good thing for him, because Patty said she was ready to keep up the fight.

“If he hadn’t have got out that back door, I’d have beat him to death,” Patty said. “And I know I would’ve because I was that mad at that person in my house for doing this to me.”

The suspect remains at large, but Patty is keeping her newfound wrench close beside her.

[ NBC-affiliate ]