DENVER (KDVR) — Valentine’s Day started out with a big shock for a Denver woman who woke up to a strange man sleeping on her couch.
“I got up and started getting ready to come downstairs to get some coffee,” Christine Kingen said. “My dog, he just kept barking.”
Thinking her dog was barking at the mailman or someone delivering flowers for Valentine’s Day, Kingen didn’t think anything of it, but it didn’t stop. She said she became alarmed and peeked around the corner and to her surprise, a man was in her home.
“I was just trying to wrap my head around what I was looking at. My first thought was, ‘Who is it that I know’ that was laying on my sofa,” Kingen said. “Then I realized that I had no idea who this was.”
She provided NewsNation affiliate FOX31 with images and video from her neighbor’s home surveillance system. It captured a man unsuccessfully trying to get into her neighbor’s home and trying others until he was successful. Kingen said the man in the video was the man lying on her couch. At the time, she said, his hood was up and he was sleeping.
Most people would have run or called the police, but Kingen took matters into her own hands.
“I just stood right here at the edge of the couch and said, ‘What are you doing in my house?'” Kingen explained. “He sat up and said, ‘I have no idea, my apologies.”’
Kingen goes on to say that once he sat up, she noticed blood on her white pillows.
“I could see that he had lacerations all across his forehead and he had grass in his hair, like he had fallen down and it surprised him,” Kingen said, recalling that he put his hand to his forehead and looked down at it like he didn’t know what happened.
Kingen described the man as disoriented and confused and said he wouldn’t leave after being asked multiple times.
“He wasn’t going anywhere,” Kingen explained. “So, I walked to the front door, opened the front door and said, ‘You have to leave now.’ It was at that point he made his way to the door and left.”
As he walked away slowly, he was caught once again on her neighbor’s camera. Kingen said she accidentally forgot to lock her door after taking her dog outside and that’s how the trespasser got inside.
“He was in my house for four hours,” Kingen said. “It was a good wake-up call for me.”
It was a lesson learned the hard way. Although she feels safe in her neighborhood, despite the incident, she said she will always be locking her door and is installing a new security system in her home.
Denver police are aware of the trespassing incident and say they’re investigating.