Burglar Caught On Video Walking Right Into Home In Rockaways
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- A Queens family was living in fear Tuesday night after a burglar managed to walk into their home while they were inside sleeping.
As CBS2's Jessica Layton reported, the thief was seen on surveillance video just walking in.
A woman who lives in the house said she saw a silhouette of a person standing in the doorway of her bedroom that night and thought it was one of her kids.
But now she is sleeping in the same bed with her kids in fear that the creep could come back.
"I keep thinking over and over like, what could have happened? Has he seen me around?" said the 32-year-old mother of two.
The suspect must have missed the sign that says no trespassing, the warning that he was is a neighborhood watch community, and the several surveillance cameras set up on Aquatic Place in the Arverne section of the Rockaways when he opened the door to this apartment and helped himself to what was upstairs - in the middle of the night.
"My son came out of the room and said, 'Mommy, where is my PlayStation?' and I said, 'Oh no.' I looked and it was gone. And I looked on the table and the laptop was gone too," the woman said. "Then I realized, oh my God, someone was in the house last night."
The woman declined to show her face because was fearful of the stranger caught vividly on video who roamed her home at 3:30 am Tuesday. Video shows the suspect, wearing a puffy coat and backpack, quietly tiptoeing and looking around the porch before opening the door accidentally left unlocked by a relative who brought groceries upstairs hours earlier.
"What would've happened if one of my kids had gotten up in the middle of the night and confronted him?" the woman said.
With such clear images and a wanted poster put out by the NYPD floating around, it is expected only to be a matter of time before the thief is caught. And the shaken mother will have something to say to him when that happens.
"He caused so much trauma -- not just for me, but for my children," she said. "What would give you the audacity to go in someone's house?"
Late Wednesday, the victim said she is double-checking the locks and asking her neighbors to do the same, while police check to see whether the same suspect might have been involved in any crimes in the area.