Surveillance video shows a man entering a woman’s house and creepily watching her sleep before leaving with a pair of socks about half an hour later.
Dan Abimana, 23, is accused of entering a woman’s unlocked home in Ankeny, Iowa, around 3:30 a.m. on April 1.
He then rearranged her shoes, stared at her, touched her knees, put on socks, wrote a note, used the bathroom, then drank a glass of water from her counter.
The woman eventually woke up when he touched her knee as she lay on the couch. When she did, he was seen on video quickly leaving the apartment.
The woman’s daughter-in-law circulated footage of the encounter and later Abimana surrendered to police, Ankeny police confirmed.
Dan Abimana, 23, was caught on surveillance video entering a woman’s home and seeing her asleep for about half an hour before leaving with a pair of socks
Abimana (pictured April 14) was charged with two counts of trespassing as police said they don’t believe he had any bad intentions but that alcohol “played a role”
“I don’t think the gentlemen had really bad intentions, but it could have ended much worse. He’s lucky someone didn’t find and shoot him,” Sergeant Corey Schneden, a spokesman for the Ankeny Police Department, told DailyMail.com.
Police eventually charged him with two counts of trespassing.
“It was a simple offense that we accused him of. The video might have helped him in this case, because he just showed strange things,” Schneden said. ‘Alcohol certainly played a role, to what degree I don’t know.’
The woman, who said she did not want to be identified, told the Law and crime the experience was traumatizing for her, members of her family, and even her dog.
She said Abimana woke her up by making contact with her knee. She then said she asked him who he was several times before he finally mysteriously replied, “I’m the guy who dropped you off last night.”
“At that point I knew he wasn’t a friend of the kids or anything,” she told Law and Crime. “My assumption was he was on drugs or something,” she said. “I didn’t smell alcohol on him when he was right in front of me and I was awake.”
The woman then screamed for her son, who arrived, but the man quickly ran off.
He was also recorded writing an unintelligible note, which he left in the apartment after he left
In the footage, the man was repeatedly seen rearranging shoes and playing with socks
The woman confirmed that a note was left – it was five or six lines on a piece of paper. She says the only comprehensible part involved watching her sleep.
Part of it said, “While you sleep,” and then it just went together in jumbled letters. You couldn’t even hear anything, it was just random letters,’ she said. “Five or six lines in one paragraph and then one line at the bottom.”
She said the door was left open and that’s how he got in, and warned others to always lock their doors when they sleep.
“Close your doors!” she said. I can’t say that loud enough or often enough. I’m really thankful that nothing happened to the kids who were in the apartment.”
She said she was disappointed that Abimana was only charged with trespassing.
“I was very upset, I was not happy at all,” she told Law and Crime. “At the very least, I thought it should have been either burglary or assault. I feared for my life when I woke up.’
The woman’s daughter-in-law, Brittany Andrews, shared the surveillance footage online with a community group, and the next day Abimana came forward to say he was the man in the video.
Andrews confirmed that her mother-in-law wanted to stay over and slept on the couch
The woman’s daughter-in-law, Brittany Andrews, also spoke about the incident in an interview with Inside Edition. She says her mother-in-law wanted to stay over and slept on the couch.
“He was drinking from a cup that was on the counter and belonged to someone else. He mingled quite a bit in our kitchen. He was on my mother-in-law’s phone a few times, was in his pocket. Put it down,” Andrews told Inside Edition.
“Looks like he was taking pictures of her sleeping at one point. He put on a pair of socks, fresh laundry waiting to be put away,’ she said.
“I’m having trouble sleeping,” her mother-in-law said. “I constantly wake up in the night and look around to see if anyone is in my room. As I enter the corner, I look to see if anyone is there. I mean, it really hit me. I want to see justice.’