MADISON COUNTY, Ill. – A woman has been caught by home surveillance cameras walking up to strangers’ front doors in Madison County and taking pictures with her phone.
Homeowners are alarmed.
Videos show the same woman doing this twice in the past couple of weeks: once at a home in Granite City and once at a residence near Troy. In both videos, the perpetrator is wearing shorts and cowboy boots. She places one hand on the storm door and appears to take cellphone photos with the other.
She leaves in the same noisy, silver compact car both times. The two homeowners do not know each other. Both are very concerned.
They’ve asked not to be identified.
“It’s very weird,” one homeowner said. “I think the biggest concern is I know this woman from nowhere. She walks up to my house like she’s on a mission and takes a photo of my door.”
The Madison County Sheriff’s Department posted a Facebook alert saying she may have been using her phone to record the inside of the residences.
“It was almost premeditated to the fact that she knew which house she was going to, drove up, paused, got out, went up, grabbed the pictures, and turned around, got back in her car and left,” the other homeowner said. “I thought, ‘What in the world is she doing?’”
People tell FOX 2 they’ve seen her doing the same thing elsewhere; she claims a bank sent her to take the photos. The two homeowners tell us they’ve checked into that claim and it’s bogus.
“My business was in order. There was no legal reason for who to do what she did. That’s what’s alarming to me,” one of the homeowners said.
“Were they perusing, trying to see what was inside the house or check out the area to come back later? That’s our fear,” said the other.
At this point, there’s no evidence of a crime, according to investigators. They call it “suspicious activity.” The sheriff’s department has asked residents to be on the lookout and report any similar cases to law enforcement.
