‘They came in with a blowtorch’

Dolores Catania and Paul “Paulie” Connell’s New Jersey townhouse was recently broken into.

The “Real Housewives of New Jersey” star and her boyfriend detailed the scary ordeal on “Jeff Lewis Live” Monday, saying the home invasion happened while they were up north filming a few scenes for the inaugural season of Bravo’s “The Real Housewives of Rhode Island.”

“Paul had his phone off, and he was performing for everyone there. He was drinking tequila. And my phone was going off, and I saw it was his son. I always answer for the kids, even if I’m in the middle of filming,” Catania, 54, recalled.

“He goes, ‘Is my dad there? The house just got broken into.’”

Connell admitted that his girlfriend’s “reaction scared the s–t out of” him because she gasped loudly when she typically doesn’t “get startled.”

But the Ireland-born entrepreneur acknowledged that the situation “was pretty bad.”

Catania explained that intruders “came in with a blowtorch,” which they used to heat a window and shatter the glass “without setting off the alarm.”

“It’s a new thing that [intruders are] doing,” Connell elaborated. “[I] have a glass-break sensor that only goes off when the pitch is high, but when you heat it, it shatters without cracking and then you just push it through with your hand and walk in.”

The couple pointed out that their property has an “insane” security system that detects motion and immediately alerts law enforcement of the activity — while staying silent in the home for the first 90 seconds.

After that, it shouts, “Intruder! Intruder!” so whoever broke in left immediately.

“By the time they left and the cops got there, it was 20 seconds,” Connell divulged, noting that the intruders “were inside the house for about a minute and something” after spending “about eight minutes trying to get in.”

The two claimed the intruders wouldn’t have been able to steal anything noteworthy anyway because they don’t keep valuable items in their home, as “it’s not worth it.”

Catania told Lewis they got to see a video of the responding officers walking through the house “with their guns,” as Connell described the operation as “no joke.”

Catania used the incident as a PSA to encourage other celebrities to keep their real-time whereabouts private.

“We all love to post when we’re out and we’re away. Paul posted that day that we were in Rhode Island, and that night, we got broken into,” she revealed, prompting Connell to vow, “First and last time. Lesson learned.”