Former WWE Superstar Sonya Deville (Daria Berenato) recalls the terrifying incident she went through at her home.
Sonya Deville recently spoke about a frightening incident from 2020 during an appearance on Insight with Chris Van Vliet. A stalker broke into her home while she and former WWE Superstar Mandy Rose were asleep inside.
Deville, aka Daria Berenato, said that she was asked to leave the home due to it being a crime scene. She packed a bag and went to stay somewhere else, but went back to pick something else up. It was then that she realized she wasn’t ready to go back in the home, noting that it was “too close to home.”
Sonya considers herself extremely lucky as she knows that if even one detail had gone differently. She or Mandy or both might not have survived the break-in. Deville explained that the stalker seemed driven by a desire to be her boyfriend. She reported some other creepy messages that her ex-girlfriend received to WWE, noting that the sender had her address. She says nothing came of the investigation, and they all chalked it up to a scary fan encounter. However, the man ended up in her living room two months later.
Sonya Deville recounts the terrifying moment her stalker entered her home
Sonya Deville responded to her stalker using her ex’s account, trying to protect her, but accidentally confirmed her own address. Two months later, while Mandy Rose was staying over, the man broke into her home.
“So when he broke in two months later, it was to my address, and Mandy slept over that night. We were filming in Tampa or Orlando at the time, it is during the pandemic.”
That night, Sonya went to bed and turned on the alarm system. Around 2:43 AM, the alarm went off. At first, she thought Mandy had gone outside, but found her asleep. When Deville checked the sliding doors, she saw a masked man standing inches away. After finding out it wasn’t Mandy Rose, Deville panicked and screamed for Rose to wake up. She told her to stay put and ran to the living room alone.
“When I’m going to check the lock, I look up and the man is standing right at the door, as close as you are to me right now. So he has a black mask on, a black backpack, all black clothes. I’m looking at him, and I scream. ‘What the f*ck do you want?’ At first, you’re thinking did a neighbor lose [their] dog? Then I see the mask, and I’m like, something’s off.”
She said the intruder didn’t run, as a robber normally would. Once he advanced towards her, she got Mandy and took off together in her car. The ADT alarm system automatically alerted the police, but Deville and Rose also called 911 themselves. Officers arrived within three minutes.
“So he thought I ran up the staircase, but I ran behind the staircase to Mandy’s room and out the garage. So when the cops got there two minutes later, he was waiting at the bottom of the staircase with a knife in one hand, pepper spray in the other hand, looking up, and they f*cking tackled him and got him out.”
Sonya Deville says turning on her alarm saved her and Mandy Rose from a scary attack
The intruder told police he planned to pepper spray Sonya Deville when she came downstairs because he was afraid of her MMA skills. The stalker also told the police he knew Deville, which was not true. Deville checked Instagram and found four years of disturbing messages from him. The last one was sent that night while he was already outside her house, watching her and Mandy Rose through the blinds.
Deville realized how close they were to serious danger and said the situation could have been much different under other circumstances.
“If one thing happened differently, like, had we slept on the couch? He had the door open, the doors right behind the couch. We would have both been maced before we could even wake up. Had I not set my alarm that night because I was being lazy and just went to sleep, which I’ve done many nights, we would be dead. Like one different move in any scenario, we wouldn’t have made it.”
“I’m very grateful. I’m very lucky, and I think about it all the time. I often feel bad for victims of stalking that don’t have that ending, because some people, stalking is a serious issue in the United States, specifically, where these women specifically are hounded and stalked by these people for years, but if they don’t cross a certain legal threshold, you can’t get them detained.”
“So they’re leaving stuff in their mailbox, they’re showing up at their front door. You’ve heard the stories even with other women wrestlers, but you can’t do anything about it unless, I know it’s weird to say, but like him breaking into my home and actually attempting something allowed me to put him in prison for 15 years.”
Berenato’s stalker, Philip Thomas, pleaded guilty to multiple charges, including attempted kidnapping, aggravated stalking, and armed burglary. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison and 15 years of probation as part of his plea agreement.
Read More: Sonya Deville Shares How Vince McMahon Assisted After Her Attempted Kidnapping
