HOUSTON – As a woman was inside her Rice Military home going about her business, at about 9 p.m. she looked through her front-door window to see a man looking right back at her.
"I could see there was a man standing on the porch with his face pushed up against the screen looking in the house," Donna Keaton said. "So I stopped and said, 'Can I help you?' And he goes, 'Is your house for sale?' I said, 'Do you see a for sale sign? No, it's not.' He said, 'Then how about your neighbors?' I said, 'I don't know. You can go ask them. Leave!'"
She said he lingered, she closed her door and he walked away. This happened as the neighborhood civic club warned residents that individuals were going door to door possibly scouting houses to burglarize by ringing doorbells and claiming to be salespeople.
"I need to make sure that I have an alarm system on there and hopefully the neighbors are watching out for each other," said one neighbor. "Never leave anything outside. All of my cars are in the garage, unlike other people (who) leave it outside. Very basic. And make sure that I have one light on in the evening before I come home and that's about it."