Early Thursday morning, two unnamed suspicious people disturbed the Fincastle apartment complex, located off of Hillsborough Street.
Marisa Akers , a junior in statistics and resident of the apartment complex, saw the suspects walking around the building around 4 a.m . The suspects approached a downstairs door of a resident’s porch at the complex and discussed going inside, according to Akers .
“When they noticed that I saw them, they starting chatting me up and trying to act like they weren’t doing anything wrong. They kept saying that they were really high,” Akers said.
The suspects allegedly walked into the apartment complex without any trouble due to an unlocked door at the front entrance. Jake S. Rabon , a resident of the apartments, found the suspects sleeping in the stairwell outside of his apartment around 4:45 a.m . when he was leaving for work. According to Rabon , the suspects claimed to be looking for a friend who was a resident.
Rabon says that he tried politely asking the suspects to leave and received very negative responses from them. He said that they were threatening violence and claimed that they would return later to hurt him if he called the police.
“I was about to leave for work and I saw them. I figured they would be peaceful if I just asked them to leave but they were immediately disruptive and rude,” Rabon said.
After asking them numerous times to leave the area and receiving combative responses, Rabon said that he had no choice but to call the police. The suspects fled the scene before any officers arrived
“All I knew to do was to call the police. It’s why I pay my taxes,” Rabon said.
The police arrived in a matter of about 10 minutes, according to Rabon . The officers inspected the area and spoke with residents but were unable to make any arrests for the disturbance.
“They [the police] were as helpful as they could have been. They were very concerned about the residents’ safety,” Rabon said.
Incidents such as this, according to Jim Sughrue , the media specialist for the Raleigh Police Department, are fairly common throughout the Raleigh area. Sughrue said that suspicious person reports happen fairly often in the Raleigh area.
“Whenever something like this happens, we encourage people to call the police immediately and get assistance,” Sughrue said.
Though dangerous situations do sometimes happen, Sughrue said that he does not feel students have cause to be unsafe. He maintains that people should always do their best to be aware of their surroundings and to stay cautious at all times.
“I would advise people to have a heightened awareness no matter where they are, but there is no reason to be extra nervous around campus,” Sughrue said.
Rabon does not believe that the suspects will be apprehended in this particular case. Though he said that the police did their job to the best of their ability, he admits that even he might not recognize the suspects in question.
“If I saw the guys I probably wouldn’t even recognize them,” Rabon said.
Larry Booth, the owner of the apartment building, said that incidents like this have been very uncommon for his complex in the past. There has only been one similar incident in six years, when a passerby was trying to evade the rain. Booth said that he would be fixing the broken door that led to the incident as soon as possible.
“I’ll be taking measures to make sure nobody can get into that stairwell again,” Booth said.