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Centerville organist describes feeling ‘absolutely helpless’ after a stranger broke into a church and attacked her

Farmington • She was used to hearing a tapping on the door outside the chapel as she practiced the organ.

But 71-year-old Margaret Orlando usually ignored the knocks. It wasn't her responsibility, she reasoned, to let people into her Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints ward after hours.

Every time Orlando would stop playing her music, either because she made a mistake or wanted to start a song over, the tapping started again.

She ignored it for about 20 minutes, she recalled on the witness stand of a Farmington juvenile courtroom Wednesday, before she felt an arm around her neck.