LEHI — A Utah County mom feared she was the target of a home invasion when she heard loud, repeated banging on her door Monday night.
Karina Thompson said it was startling to hear someone outside of her house, repeatedly banging on the windows and front door, and ringing the doorbell.
She said it turned out to be multiple people hanging around her property long enough to concern her and her husband.
Thompson showed KSL-TV doorbell video of one person repeatedly knocking on her door. Two others were huddled together sitting on her front steps, facing the street, and a fourth person was across the street. Thompson said it looked like they were recording the incident on their phone.
She said her husband’s gut instinct was to defend their home, and they realized the situation could’ve taken a turn.
Thompson had just put her son to bed when the knocking started. Her husband was across the house, sleeping in their bedroom.
“In order to cross the threshold in my house, to get to my master bedroom where my husband was sleeping, I had to walk by windows and I didn’t want to be seen,” she said.
When the noise didn’t stop, she called her husband.
“As he was getting up out of bed, the doorbell proceeded to ring a couple of dozen times, the pounding on the door got louder and louder,” Thompson said.
She said the repeated knocking and ringing lasted minutes. She said she was terrified.
“This is somebody trying to come in,” she remembered thinking. “This is somebody trying to start a problem.”
Her family isn’t used to hearing any knocking or the doorbell, at all. They have a sign on their door stating, “Someone with PTSD lives here, do not knock! Do not ring the door bell for any reason.”
Thompson said she and her husband, who is a veteran, have never had any issues with people adhering to the sign.
She said, by the time her husband walked outside to confront the strangers, they were both panicked.
“When he called off a couple of words and got their attention, they took off running,” she said. “I proceeded to call off a couple of words, took off running after them, and then shortly after the police showed up.”
Lehi Police said they believe this was a prank.
“It was not just a harmless prank, in my opinion, of a doorbell ditch or a knock and dash,” Thompson said. “This was a deliberate attempt to get us outside for a particular reason, whether that was a reaction that they were looking to capture for content, maybe a TikTok challenge or something like that, which is not acceptable.”
Thompson said her family felt their lives were in danger, and they felt they had to defend themselves.
“If this was a harmless prank, it would be absolutely devastating to everyone involved to have to use that self-defense method, to use a weapon to defend our home and our lives and our property, to be safe and see a loss of life or a severe injury,” she said.
She said people don’t know what’s on the other side of the door. The mom wants other parents to educate their children about how dangerous possible stunts like this can be.
“In the position where we feel like we have to defend ourselves, I don’t want to see anyone get severely injured, get shot, it’s not worth it,” Thompson said.
A spokesperson for Lehi police said, typically with a home invasion, the intruder will knock or ring the bell and wait outside for attempting to break in. Thompson said this group hung out around her home long enough to seriously worry them and prompt this response.
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