SAN DIEGO — A San Diego State University student sitting on her bed in her room caught a man climbing into her yard and staring at her through her bedroom window.
The woman, who wished to remain anonymous, said she and her female neighbors think peeping toms feel free to roam their neighborhood because it’s so dark - she and her roommate said the streetlights surrounding their home are all burnt out.
She filled out a report on the City’s Get It Done App but was told it takes an average of 332 days to repair streetlights, so she reached out to CBS 8 to see if we could get the city’s attention to the lack of working streetlights in the neighborhood where so many university students live.
When she showed CBS 8 the Ring Camera video, she said it looked like he knew exactly where he was going, as if he’s been there before, and he walked over to the side of the house where her bedroom window was.
She was sitting on her bed, home alone.
She switched the Ring Camera view to the sideyard, and that’s when she watched him watch her through her bedroom window. She said, “I saw him creeping, looking into my window. His hands cupped over his eyes. I was scared. I was terrified.”
She said all she could think to do was crawl into a room without windows and call her mom. Her mom didn’t believe her, but when she realized it was a real-life nightmare, she told her daughter to call 911. The student said, “She was in disbelief.”
She said it took about 10 minutes for officers to arrive. They searched the yard with flashlights but never found him. She said, “I have no video of him exiting. I don't know where he went.”
She told CBS 8 her female classmates are scared.
No streetlights work on her street or the surrounding streets. She said, “This makes you so much more susceptible to this happening. In the dark, it just makes us more of a target. There are students everywhere. Young females who are scared they're scared to be walking at night. You can't even see if someone's behind you."
CBS 8 contacted the City of San Diego early Monday morning and the College District’s City Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera. His office and the city’s transportation department said a scheduled streetlight repair in the College Area at Remington Road and Collwood Boulevard this month, but that’s about a mile away from this student’s streets.
She hopes sharing her story will make the City see that all college districts should be prioritized. “Before I even moved to a house in this area, I was aware that lots of girls were targeted, and especially, I think with these street lights out, it makes us so much more susceptible.”
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