HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (WHNT) — A mother and father say they caught a “Peeping Tom” looking at their young daughters through the front window.
Jenna Farrar and Jerry Leverette are staying at the Southern Comfort Suites on University Drive in Huntsville with their 6 and 10-year-old daughters. They have a personal security camera installed at their unit’s entrance, and the video it caught is any parent’s nightmare.
“About 4:45, our youngest daughter came in and woke her up and said, ‘Mommy, there’s somebody outside’,” Leverette said.
That somebody the parents say was a “Peeping Tom,” a grown man appearing to put his hand down his pants while looking at the young girls through the window. News 19 chose to cover this man’s face due to him not charged with anything.
“I just don’t even understand it,” Leverette said. “I mean, he’s got to be really sick in the head.”
The video revealed the man was outside for nearly two hours early Monday morning. It showed people passing by trying to get the man to leave. The man even tried to lure the girls outside of their unit.
Farrar said she went out to check where he went once her daughter pointed him out. A man in the alleyway next to the building saw her and pointed in the opposite direction, seeming to her that he escaped down that road. She then headed back into her unit.
After reviewing camera footage more closely, she discovered the man pointing was the same alleged “Peeping Tom”. But he wasn’t done even after being spotted by Farrar.
“When I was looking at my phone and trying to wake him [Leverette] up at the same time, I looked at the window, and he had already come back to the window again,” Farrar said. “And we made eye contact, and then he took off… can’t even explain it. It is just pure anger.”
That’s when the parents called Huntsville Police.
“They came out that [Monday] morning,” Leverette said. “We told them what was up, showed them some footage. The guy [Huntsville police officer] took off and went to look for him. He came back, said they didn’t see him anywhere. They were going to look further. Left again. He never came back after that.”
The first officer did not file a police report, but the second HPD officer on the scene later that day did.
Farrar’s Facebook post about the situation sparked a fire in the community. The parents say several people started reaching out to them about the case, with one saying they spotted the man in public.
Without a warrant, HPD told Leverette and Farrar that its hands are tied.
“I’d seen him, found them and pointed, was pointing him out, and the cop was like, there’s nothing we can do until you go take a warrant on him,” Leverette said. “And so that was, that was pretty hard watching him just walk away free.”
Leverette told News 19 they are now working with an investigator within the police department to obtain the warrant.
News 19 reached out to Huntsville Police several times on Wednesday and received no response.
The post ‘Sick in the head’: Parents speak out after Peeping Tom caught on camera appeared first on WHNT.
