GUT INSTINCT

A vigilant neighbor’s impulse to report suspicious activity paid off.

In mid-November, a man rang the doorbell of a Windsor Park home. Rather than opening the door, the homeowner spoke to the unknown visitor — a black man appearing to be in his early 20s — through her window. He announced that he was looking for “Kim.”

Keeping her door closed, the neighbor responded that nobody by that name lived in her home. That’s when the man retreated to his white four-door sedan and drove away.

But not before the homeowner wrote down the license plate of the suspicious vehicle and called police.

“The whole thing just felt odd to me, so I called 911,” the neighbor wrote in an email shared by the Windsor Park Neighborhood Association.

Ten minutes after calling 911, she writes, a detective called asking for more information. Based on the details she shared about what the man was wearing and the license plate number, police were able to pull over the car and take a look.

Turns out that the man who rang the doorbell that morning had stolen property in his car from a previous burglary that day. Police say the driver and his two accomplices had been hitting the area between Forest and Walnut Hill.

—Whitney Thompson