THUNDER BAY — Brenda Hansen awoke to a stranger trying to break into her house shortly after midnight last Thursday.
“It was a terrifying experience,” Hansen told Newswatch.
In the early hours on Thursday morning, Hansen said she heard a loud banging coming from her back patio, so she grabbed a hammer and got up to see what was happening.
"My instincts kicked in," she said.
“There was somebody on my deck, and I didn't know exactly what they were doing, but I realized that it was him ripping off the screen door of my house. Then they were trying to boot in my patio door to gain access to my house,” said Hansen.
Hansen said she opened her patio blinds and began screaming at the person to “get off her property.”
“He didn’t run away,” she said.
Instead, he walked off her deck, crossed her front lawn, and continued down the street.
Feeling scared, Hansen said she stared out her front window for some time to make sure the man wasn’t coming back before calling the police.
“I called the non-emergency line because he's not here now. I don't think he's coming back. They called me back and transferred me to 911. I talked with them , and they then transferred me to the BEAR (break and enter and robbery) team, and they called me back the next morning,” said Hansen.
The Thunder Bay Police Service is investigating the incident.
As she watched the person leaving her property, she saw him throw something onto her lawn. Feeling it was safe to leave her home, she found a rearview mirror from a Ford truck.
She noticed footprints in the snow and said the man had also tried to gain entry to her car and garage.
Hansen said she received a message from a friend living in the neighbourhood that a man had also wandered onto the friend's property around 11 p.m.
She said the friend's security footage showed a man wearing the same clothes as the man she saw.
In the video, which Hansen provided to Newswatch, a man is seen wearing a black hoodie with the word “Tupac” and grey sweatpants.
Living in the city's north end, Hansen said she lives in a “pretty good area” of the city, despite it not being the first time she heard banging at her door in the middle of the night.
Police ask that anyone with information that might be relevant to the investigation call their non-emergency line or contact Crime Stoppers.
