Man breaks into sorority house

By John Caldwell
Daily Forty-Niner

A man broke into the Alpha Thi Sorority House on East Fourth Street early Sunday morning and startled a woman who found him standing in a doorway watching her.

The incident took place just before 5:45 a.m. when an intruder entered through a sliding glass door on the side of the house and opened the door to the girl's bedroom, said Kristina Simmons, president of the sorority. The girl, who wished to remain unidentified, awoke when she heard someone talking. She saw a man standing in the doorway who quickly fled, but she did not see his face.

"She was really shaken up," Simmons said. "But nothing was taken and nobody was hurt."

The girl, whose bedroom is in the front unit of a two-house residence, was the only person who saw the intruder, Simmons said. She heard what sounded like someone talking to someone else, leading her to believe there might have been more than one intruder, she said.

"He noticed she was sitting up in her bed and he got out of there," Simmons said. "She called the girls in the back house and they called police."

The girl gave a description to the Long Beach Police Department who were already on the alert because of recent attacks involving the Belmont Shore rapist. The police brought out the K-9 unit and combed the area for four hours, Simmons said.

"At this point we don't have any reason to believe it's related to the Belmont incidents," said Long Beach police officer Jana Blair. "But we can't completely rule that out."

The officers who responded do not think that burglary was a motive for the break-in, Blair said. No losses were recorded.

"They did not make an arrest," Blair said. "But they will be following up on the incident."

The suspect is described as a white male in his late 20s or early 30s, around six feet tall and wearing a dark shirt.

"This was the first time anyone has broke in here," Simmons said. "We're possibly hiring private security for the next week or two to ease the comfort of the girls in the house."