Apartment Intrusion Goes Viral

Reporter Sydney Trahan

(San Marcos) For college student living in student housing, intrusion is often in the back of their minds. While authorities can’t always help, social media can link students to those who can.

With the knowledge of the power of social media, Isabel Canales took to TikTok, posting a video that shows an intrusion on October 29th. She hoped to identify the people captured on Ring cameras they have in- and outside their apartment. In no time at all, the video reached over 2 million views, and viewers provided a name of the suspect.

“I think I posted that TikTok super early that morning like right after it happened because I was like ‘this cannot happen again,’ like ‘I’m gonna find this guy,’ so I posted it,” Isabel Canales said. “I started getting tons of comments, I got a few DM’s referring to this one guy. Another girl had sent me a ring footage of these guys walking around in The Retreat about 30 minutes later still going into people’s houses. So, I ended up looking the guy up and I’ve never heard of this man before. I looked him up on Twitter and it said that ‘whatever his name was’ had blocked me.”

“Once we all realized that Belle had left her phone over at her friend’s house, we all run out and I’m about like halfway there and I like turn around and I like see the group of guys walking up to the house and like I just can’t tell what’s going on so I like start walking up to the house and I’m like ‘hey like what are y’all doing?’” Isabella Bean said. “Because at this point they’re already walking away from the house, but they’re kind of like speed walking like you can tell like something’s up. So I was like let me go lock the door because that creeped me out. I come in, I grab my keys, I locked the door, and I go back.”

Canales said they contacted the police and reported a residential burglary. “I got a call from the detective,” Canales said. “We had a chat for like 20-30 minutes, let him know what happened, I sent him the name, I gave him all the information I had, all the pictures, and it’s been about, how much? Like a month since. I’ve never gotten a response.”

“We’re definitely a lot more wary like we put the door stopper on it every single time, the window stoppers, we locked the door with the dead bolt, everything,” Bean said. “It kind of sucks. It’s like, you’re just constantly thinking about what happened that situation like it could happen again you know? Like you never know.”

Though social media has negative connotations, this story shows it can be useful for more than just laughs.