Madeline Bertha (COL ’08) was sleeping alone in her room last Friday night in her first-floor room of her Prospect Street house. The door that connects her room to the backyard was the only door that went unchecked that night.

“Katrina [Frantz (COL ’08), one of my housemates] and I had checked all the doors before we went to bed,” said Julia Marter (COL ’08), another of Bertha’s housemates, who got home after Bertha had gone to bed. “We didn’t check Maddie’s room because we didn’t expect someone to hop the fence and break in.”

The residents said that the door to Bertha’s room was likely the one that an unknown man, dressed in a leather jacket and dark jeans, used to enter their home early Saturday morning. The house between 34th and Bank Streets, like all the others on that block, does not have access to the backyard from the street, and fences on either side separate it from its neighbors.

Sarah Tysoe (MSB ’08), one of the housemates, was the first to see the man.

“I heard him come into the room,” said Tysoe, who sleeps on the third floor. “I wasn’t wearing my contacts, but I could see he wasn’t one of our friends.”

Tysoe said that she got the impression that he knew he was not supposed to be there but also that she did not feel threatened by the man, who left her room shortly after entering. Neither Tysoe nor the intruder spoke a word. After standing in the bedroom doorway for a short time, he carefully closed the door, quietly walking back down the stairs, taking nothing from the room.

The roommates said that he seemed to be trying to find a way out. He went back to the first floor, this time waking Bertha.

“He touched my leg and woke me,” Bertha said. “He asked me something like, `How do I get out of here?’ My heart was pounding.”

The intruder next walked slowly out of the door and then moved calmly toward the front door. Bertha said nothing during the whole incident, which lasted about 30 seconds between when he woke her to when he walked out the front door. The man walked by a laptop and three $20 bills lying on the dresser, but he still did not take anything. Bertha said she then ran up the stairs to Tysoe and arter’s room to tell them what had happened.

They said they called male friends to ask them to come over, but none answered. They then decided to call Georgetown’s Department of Public Safety and the Metropolitan Police Department at 4:10 a.m., both of which responded within minutes.

Bertha described the intruder as a tall, thin black male.

MPD Assistant Second District Commander Frank Hill (CAS ’87) said this type of incident is not uncommon.

“I can remember a guy who, to get out, his lie was, `Does Paul live here?'” Hill said of a similar incident several years ago.

The problem with cases like the one that happened last weekend on Prospect Street, Hill said, is pinning a crime on the intruder.

“If they haven’t actually taken anything, that’s a tough one,” he said. “For burglary, you have to articulate an intent to commit a crime.”

D.C. legal code specifies unlawful entry as entry onto private property without intent to commit a crime and refusal to leave once being asked.

“If they’re just in there wandering around but haven’t stolen anything or assaulted anyone, you don’t have anything,” Hill said.

MPD Second District Lieutenant Roland Hoyle said the incident was not a shocking, but he called it “bizarre,” adding that the residents were wise to report the incident to MPD.

Shortly after Bertha and her roommates reported the intruder early Saturday morning, a similar incident occurred on O Street.

Sarah Arnold (COL ’08) had come back from a friend’s party and was planning to sleep in her living room with her roommate and her roommate’s friend. The door to the house on the 3400 block of O Street was locked, but the window was cracked open. At around 4:35 a.m., she awoke to someone standing on her pillow.

“I was startled. He was really startled,” Arnold said. “I started screaming at him. He ran through my living room and into the kitchen, mumbling things like `I’m getting my friend,’ and `I’m looking for something.'”

The man found the front door and exited, taking nothing from the house. Arnold said the man was Hispanic and approximately 5-foot-8. She and her roommates called MPD the next morning.

Arnold said that this was not the first time Arnold’s home had been entered by a stranger

Three weeks before, they had a similar intruder but did not report the incident. That time, her roommate, who was the last to come home that night, left the front door unlocked. The intruder, who Arnold said she thought was a white male, entered Arnold’s room and laid down on the floor. When she asked who it was, the man left the room and went to another room. Arnold said that after entering the room of Jane Pennebaker’s (SFS ’08), one of Arnold’s housemates, he started touching Pennebaker “inappropriately.”

“She didn’t realize what was happening. [Pennebaker] was like, `Stop, stop,'” Arnold said.

Neither Arnold nor Pennebaker realized what had happened until the next morning when the two had a conversation about the previous night.

Arnold said she and her housemates had always kept their front door locked but that she had never locked the deadbolt on her door. “Since then, I’ve been locking my deadbolt,” she said.

DPS Associate Director Doris Bey said she was not sure if the recent burglaries are linked. “There are no suspects at the time,” she said.

The two recent burglaries were not the first reported burglaries this fall. According to DPS public safety alerts, on the morning of Sept. 26, a black middle-aged male entered a Henle Village apartment, mumbled that he was looking for someone and exited through the front door. Four days later at a T Street house, residents reported that a Hispanic male around 5-foot-10 entered the residence, asked if someone could show him the front door and lock it behind him, and left. And on Oct. 7, a student reported that she woke up to hear her roommate shouting at an unknown Hispanic male in his early 30s, who then ran out of the house.

Bertha said she hasn’t slept as well since the incident. She said she now checks her back door to make sure it is locked “five times a day.”

“Now, whenever I hear a noise, I make sure I know what the noise is,” she said.