'I freaked out': Masked person seen in Waukesha apartment for an hour
WAUKESHA, Wis. (CBS 58) — A frightening sight was caught on camera in a Waukesha neighborhood overnight.
Footage shows a masked person walking around outside and then going into someone's apartment building uninvited.
"I hit my husband, I was like, babe, wake up," said the woman whose camera caught the incident. "I freaked out."
Video from outside the door of the Waukesha woman's apartment shows an eerie sight as a masked person stands swaying back and forth in the middle of the night.
"It was just freaky," the woman said. "I watched the video like 15 times at this point because I was just trying to figure out, was it a man or a woman? Was a child out at 2 a.m.? I was looking at their pockets because it looked like something sharp was in their pockets and like they were playing with something clicking in one of the videos."
She says the masked person stood outside her door for an hour Wednesday around 2 a.m., and when she woke up to see the video, she immediately checked on her kids.
"I just jumped up and ran to my daughter's room to make sure they were still there and still safe, and yeah, we called the police less than an hour after we woke up," the woman said.
Waukesha police told CBS 58 News they identified the masked person hours later. They say it was a homeless woman who claimed she was just trying to warm up.
"It makes me feel a little bit better knowing that this person got caught because it's more like a safety net kind of thing, knowing that this person is not in the area and can't harm anybody here," a neighbor said.
Regardless, neighbors say they are updating their security moving forward to prevent any worst-case scenarios.
"I think it's just scary in general because of the world today," the neighbor said. "Because you never know what people's intentions are. You never know if they're actually going to come in and hurt somebody or just leave."
Waukesha police say the homeless woman was provided resources, and no one wanted to file a complaint against her.