Transcript
Original Poster (0:05)
This occurred in the winter of 2013 when I was 21 and in the military. I'm a petite female for context, and I have the appearance of looking younger than I actually am. A little backstory at this point in time. I had been in the military for a little over two years, my first duty station being in Detroit. I had lived off base and at first lived in a township north of Detroit where my apartment was broken into. I woke up to my door handle being completely disassembled and my car was broken into, although that was partly my fault since my car at the time had manual locks and I might have had a back door unlocked the night it was broken into. After those events I decided to move since my lease was up and I chose a gated community even further north northwest into a different township. I lived on my own the entire time I was stationed in Detroit, which always kept me on edge because SVU and CSI really messed with my trust of strangers. Anyway, the new place was super nice and affordable and even though it wasn't completely secure as far as a literal gate surrounding the apartments, residents had to have a pass to even drive through the community and visitors had to check in with security before being allowed on the premises. And I felt way safer at this new place than my prior residence. The apartments were set up to have four units per housing building and the front doors leading into each of the apartments were on the outside. Due to this, each door had a light next to it so when you checked your people you could see who's there. That's important for later. Our duty rotation was similar to a firefighter's duty rotation where we would stand duty for two days and have sliding weekends duty every other weekend. Meaning it's a pretty predictable schedule. This will come into play later. I'm super introverted and I keep to myself most of the time, but I am friendly when I meet new people, etc. But never one to make best friends with the neighbors. So when I first moved in summer of 2012, I had a neighbor next to me on the second level and one below me on the first level. But over the next two months they moved out and I was alone in my housing building, which I would be lying if I said that didn't give me anxiety a bit. Fast forward to December 2012 and our duty rotation had a complete overhaul, making it a little less predictable. We would stay on duty for a day and overnight and the next day, work until 14:00 clock and go home for the next two days. Over the holidays my Then boyfriend visited me from out of state, which we were doing a distance relationship so we barely saw each other. A week later I was taking out my garbage to the dumpster and collecting my mail. Once I unlocked my mailbox by the dumpster and turned around, there was a guy standing around 30ft behind me just staring at me. I was startled because it was broad daylight and I didn't see him when I was walking to the dumpster mailbox area. He's dressed in black pants and a black hoodie and larger than me so I would have seen him or heard him at least. I just stand there not making a move and he says hi, I'm Jim, how are you? So I introduce myself and he asks if I'm in the military because he's seen me in some type of uniform. So I say yes and that I'm in a branch here. He then makes me super weirded out by mentioning my schedule.
