TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — A real estate agent was assaulted while setting up for an open house on Saturday in Palm Coast, according to officials.

The Flagler County Sheriff’s Office responded to a home on Princeton Lane around 11 a.m. after the woman called 911 and told the operator she was just assaulted.

When deputies arrived, the woman said an older man drove by several times and waved at her before he stopped in front of the home. The woman told him the open house wasn’t starting for another 20 minutes.

The woman said when she walked inside, the man, later identified as 78-year-old Carlos Da Silva, of Palm Coast, followed her in, asking her a series of real estate questions and then advising that it wasn’t safe for her to be alone.

That’s when Da Silva went to shake her hand, pulled her in tightly, and began kissing her neck. In an arrest affidavit obtained by NBC affiliate WESH, the woman said he held her “tight in his arms to the point she was unable to free himself” and that before he left, he took one of her business cards, saying he’d “talk to her soon.”

Deputies located Da Silva’s vehicle and conducted a traffic stop. He claimed he didn’t stop in that area of town that day, before changing his story, saying he only stopped briefly to talk to a woman. He then admitted to going into the home, pulling her in for a hug, but said he immediately left after.

“This creep saw an opportunity to prey on a woman, but I doubt he expected her to bravely fight him off and turn him in,” Sheriff Staly said. “Because of the victim’s quick thinking and the quick work of our team he found a new home at the Green Roof Inn.”

Da Silva was arrested for simple battery and burglary on a dwelling with assault and battery since the open house hadn’t begun. He was taken to the Sheriff Perry Hall Inmate Detention Facility and is being held without bond.