Heather Chow awoke to a flashlight shining into the windows of her secluded Canyon Point room at 5:30 a.m.
She dialed 911 but didn’t complete the call, hoping the flashlight was from police. But after the first bang on the window, she knew it was not.
Chow pressed the call button, then grabbed her laptop and ran out of her room and up to the second floor of building A8, following the operator’s directions to try to find somewhere safe to lock herself into.
It was early Sunday morning of Thanksgiving weekend, and the building seemed empty. Chow remained in the hallway and heard another bang on the window. Then she heard a smash.
Meanwhile, university police reached the building. Three officers surrounded the area outside the window of Chow’s room, which faces a small hill of dirt with no room for foot traffic.
The officers saw the broken window and a hand moving the curtain inside the room. They called to the person in the room and received no response. Moments later, a fourth officer stationed outside the front entrance of the building saw a man run out toward the Sunset Village Parking Structure. Police chased him, but all they saw was a silver car speeding out of the structure. Police assumed it was the burglar’s vehicle from the speed of the car and sequence of events, but they cannot be sure.
In the second floor hallway, Chow was receiving a play-by-play from the operator, who stayed on the line for 12 minutes and told her when police arrived at the scene and chased the suspect. After she heard police yelling after the man, Chow remembered that a friend of hers lived on the second floor, and she went to his room.
She stayed there until police called and told her to return to her room to talk with officers.
Chow went back to her room to find a hole smashed in the middle of the window, but all her belongings were safe.
Three hours later, the window had been replaced, and police were gone, but Chow was afraid to be in her room alone. Her roommate wouldn’t return until later in the day, so she stayed with friends and slept in another person’s dorm, exhausted from the morning’s events.
Police said the only information they have is that the man who ran out of the building is between 5’9 to 5’11 in height, black, and was clad in a black sweatshirt and dark pants.
It is fairly common for rooms on the first level of a residential building to be broken into over holiday breaks. Usually, though, burglars break into windows that students leave ajar, said UCPD Sergeant Robert DeFrancesco.
Two windows in Hitch Suites were also broken during the Thanksgiving weekend, but those rooms were vacant at the time, DeFrancesco said.
UCLA Housing Services gives students living on first floors wooden dowels to block their windows from being forced open, but this does not prevent a window from being smashed. A dowel was in the window in Chow’s room when the burglar broke in.
UCLA Housing Services declined requests for an interview on short notice.
Chow and her roommate, third-year pre-psychology student Gabriela Mendoza, said they hope to switch to a room on a different level. Until then, they are sleeping in their current room, but they remain afraid it could be broken into again.
For Chow, it is not the fear of theft that scares her, but what could have happened if she had not woken up and fled her room before the burglar came in.
Chow said she would feel safer if there were bars on the windows or more police patrols in early morning.
Police continue to investigate the break-in by reviewing video surveillance from the Hill and from traffic control cameras in the area, DeFranceso said.
He could not give more details on the investigation, but emphasized that it is important for students who saw anything suspicious to call police.