Man breaks into homes of NC State students in Raleigh while they sleep
RALEIGH (WTVD) -- A serial burglar is back behind bars after Raleigh police charged him with breaking into three homes where N. C. State University students were sleeping over the weekend.
At one home on Chamberlain Street, just across from the NCSU campus, two young women were asleep inside.
A resident of the home, an NCSU junior, told ABC 11 that a friend was asleep on the couch when she vaguely recalls seeing a man standing over her. She was groggy and thought it was a friend who was visiting.
But when she got up Friday morning she realized her purse was gone. The two called the male friend but he said he didn't take the purse. That's when they realized it might have been a burglar.
They called Raleigh police. As officers were inside investigating the student said a man got into one of the women's cars and started it using keys taken during the break-in. The student said police ran outside and caught the man.
Investigators have charged 38-year old Marc Leslie Williams with burglarizing three homes that night on Chamberlain Street as well as breaking into cars and stealing items valued at nearly $2,000.
At one of the homes police lifted fingerprints from liquor bottles after residents told investigators they believe the intruder drank from those bottles.
But what is frightening for the several students who live in the three houses is that a strange man was inside those homes with them while they were sleeping.
"It was kind of shocking really. I wasn't expecting it at all," NCSU student Carson Hunt told ABC11.
Hunt encountered the man just about 12:30 AM Friday as the suspect walked back inside the house where Hunt lives with several roommates. The man had carried more than a thousand dollars of electronics out a back door. When he came back Hunt told him to leave and he bolted.
Hunt and the female student two doors down noted that their houses were not locked.
"Very scary," Hunt said. He added, "Definitely going to lock the doors, make sure it doesn't happen again or try and prevent it from happening."
Williams served a total of two-and-a-half years in prison off and on between 1998 and 2008 for drug possession, breaking into cars, and burglarizing homes. After he was released in 2008 he was charged again with similar crimes in 2009. That time he was convicted not only of those crimes but for being a habitual felon. He was in prison for more than six years when he was released 14 weeks ago in November of 2015.
There are no violent crimes listed on Williams' lengthy criminal history but that is little consolation to Hunt.
"He could have come in armed. He could have been just like ready to injure somebody along with steal our stuff. So it was very fortunate that he wasn't, didn't come in with the intent of hurting us."
Williams is currently being held in the Wake County Detention Center on a bond of $140,000.
