An Aberfeldy resident has warned her neighbours to keep their doors locked after a drunken man who was missing a shoe barged into her home and claimed it was his own.
The man, who is believed to be in his 40s or 50s stumbled into the town square flat of 24-year-old Sian Cowan at 4.30am on Friday.
Sian claims that the man was under the influence of alcohol or drugs and believed that he was in his own flat.
Intruder was a ‘complete stranger’
She said: “It was a complete stranger who was much older than me – at least twice my age.
“If it was somebody I knew it might have been a bit different but it wasn’t.
“Obviously it was a bit of a panic.”
One shoe
The man had entered through the front door of the flat, which Sian had forgotten to lock the night before.
She added: “I usually lock my door but for whatever reason I forgot to last night.
“Close enough to 4.30am I heard the fire doors – I live in a council flat with heavy fire doors – open.
“I got up to check what was going on and I saw a man that I didn’t know standing in my flat with just one shoe on.
“He was fully in the door, the door was fully closed behind him.
“I asked what he was doing in my flat and he kept just saying that it was his flat, which I knew it wasn’t.”
‘I’ve never run back to my flat faster’
Luckily, the young woman was able to push the intruder out of her flat, however he then refused to leave due to his missing shoe.
“I knew his shoe wasn’t in my flat,” Sian said.
“But I told him I’d look for it just to get him outside.
“After a while I told him that I couldn’t find it and offered to walk him out of the close and after we walked down we found his other shoe at the bottom.
“I handed it to him and I’ve never run back to my flat faster.
“He stayed for a while and knocked on the door a couple of times but he did leave.
“The next morning I was so scared that I had to get my co-worker to come across the road and walk me to work.”
Warning
The town square resident is now warning her neighbours to keep safe later at night, saying: “After 10pm I would say it’s time to lock your doors.
“I think that Aberfeldy is a safe place, but especially during summer we might be getting a lot of visitors and people we don’t know around here, so it’s better to be safe.”