A Southern California couple remains shaken up after security video shows two people watching them as they slept and attempting to enter their home.
The Murrieta homeowners told KTLA they’ve never seen the suspects before and are terrified they may strike again.
“The girl was here and there’s a little opening in the blinds right here so she was just angling her phone to film us sleeping,” homeowner John Luyben said. “The head of the bed is right here.”
It was around 2:30 a.m. when the victims noticed the two suspects peeping through their window.
“Our dog starts barking, he lays in the bed with us,” John recalled. “That woke my wife up. We have a camera pointing right at our back window.”
“We were trying to quiet down the dog because it was 2:30 but then I kind of heard a shuffle from behind us where that window is,” John’s wife, Bayleigh, recalled. “I go on my phone and look at my app where we have our security system and I see two people standing like this, less than a foot away, directly behind us.”
Surveillance video shows one of the suspects using her phone to seemingly take pictures or video.
When the suspects first arrive at the home, they’re seen on video ringing the doorbell and trying to open the front door. When no one answers, they take matters into their own hands.
John said he typically parks his truck in front of their gate to discourage strangers from accessing their home.
The two suspects decided to hop onto his truck, climb over their fence and trespass into the enclosed backyard.
The terrified couple reported the incident to the police. They said the entire incident lasted around seven minutes with about three of those minutes involving the suspects staring into the couple’s bedroom window.
Authorities told KTLA they believed the suspects were two juveniles who may have been targeting the wrong home so they weren’t investigating the case further.
The Luybens, however, don’t believe that theory.
“I personally don’t buy that because if they are going to a buddy’s house or friend’s house and they’re going to mess with them when they look through the window and they see me and my wife asleep. Like ‘OK, that’s obviously not my friend and we’re going to leave now,’” John said. “But the fact that they were looking at us and stayed for an additional three minutes and took photos of us, that just indicates that they were not at the wrong house.”
“I’m just worried because kids will be kids,” Bayleigh said. “They might do reckless things, but I think if they don’t get caught and continue to do this, the situation could end up a lot worse if they stumble onto the wrong property.”
John said police have since told him at least one of the suspects may be a local high school student. KTLA has not yet received confirmation of that detail.
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