SLO woman gets a fright after video captures gloved man lurking outside her home

A San Luis Obispo woman got a scare after a motion-activated camera recorded footage of a gloved man lurking outside her front door and holding onto the handle early Saturday morning.

The surveillance video, which shows clear footage of the man’s face, has gained lots of attention on social media and has generated concern from residents.

The video shows a man wearing what appear to be latex gloves peering into the windows of a house and holding onto the door handle; the man then walks around and looks about before returning to the door handle.

About 50 seconds into the video, the man appears to notice the camera and wipes the lens with his gloved fingers for several seconds before he walks away toward a car sitting in front of the house and appears to look into the car before walking off.

A 45-year-old woman, who did not want to give her name, lives alone with her dog in the house off Foothill Boulevard, about 2 miles away from Cal Poly.

She said that she was asleep when, about 2:30 a.m., she heard the bell go off that her video doorbell “Ring” makes when it detects motion.

She said that by the time she got her phone and looked at the camera, she saw the man leaving and thought it was a drunken college student that went to the wrong house — not an unusual occurrence because of her proximity to Cal Poly. She said that she didn’t worry and just went back to sleep.

It was only later when she went to erase the video that she looked at it more closely and realized the footage was much longer than she thought and that the man was wearing gloves. That’s when she got really scared.

“He obviously was targeting the house. He obviously planned this,” she said.

The woman contacted police, who are investigating the incident as an attempted burglary, according to Sgt. Fred Mickel of the San Luis Obispo Police Department.

“I refuse to be scared,” she said, adding that the incident has made her more realistic about crime, and she’s since double-checked her security efforts. “I’m determined that he picked the wrong person to mess with, and he’s going down.”

The man is holding something thin, light-colored and circular in his mouth, and there is something black sticking out of his back pocket, which she said police told her could possibly be a handgun.

“She did everything right,” Mickel said, praising the woman’s security measures — her doors were locked and her security camera appeared to have scared the man away.

He advised the public to lock their doors both at night and when they leave the house during the day no matter where they live, and to report anything suspicious to police. He added that security systems are good deterrents, as is having lighting on outside the house overnight.

Police are working to follow up on a few leads they’ve received, Mickel said.

Anyone who has information about the incident or recognizes the man in the video is asked to contact the San Luis Obispo Police Department at 805-781-7317 or, if they wish to remain anonymous, San Luis Obispo County Crime Stoppers at 805-549-STOP.

This story was originally published October 23, 2016 at 5:45 PM with the headline "SLO woman gets a fright after video captures gloved man lurking outside her home."