Housekeeper Sexually Assaulted After Answering Door To Man Claiming To Be Neighbor

(FOX 11) "Do not open your door! Do not open your door," Alice Gratias tells me.

It's good advice from the Granada Hills resident but sadly it comes a day after her longtime housekeeper did just the opposite -- open the door for a stranger she thought was a friend.

"He said 'I'm your neighbor. I'm your neighbor, Kevin,'" Alice tells me. "And that's when she opened the door and he just pushed it open and pushed her down."

You could see the heartbreak on Alice's face and hear it in her voice.

The stranger then brutally attacked her housekeeper, a woman who's worked for her for the last 30 years.

She's more than a housekeeper, she's a friend.

"He knocked her down, knocked her against the wall and knocked her down," said Alice. "She finally got up a little bit, and she kicked him so he bounced out the door and then he ran away. But then he tried to come back in."

"Again?" I asked. It was 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday afternoon in broad daylight. Pretty brazen of him.

"Yes," she replied, adding that he ran away.

"Did he take anything?"

"No. He was only after one thing."

In between the fighting, police say the housekeeper was sexually assaulted by the suspect, described only as a tall African-American man last seen running down San Jose Street.

Detectives with the Los Angeles Police Department's Robbery-Homicide Division worked past midnight combing the home Alice has lived in for the last five decades for clues, fingerprints, DNA and anything that could help lead them to the suspect.

Meanwhile, Alice can't say it enough.

"Do not open your door! Do not open your door!"

"No matter what they say," I concur. "No matter what they say, don't open your door!"

If you have any information about the assault on San Jose Street in Granada Hills, please call the LAPD's Devonshire station at (818) 832-0633.