Cozy Intruder in Cocktail Dress Is Busted Lounging on Stranger’s Couch

A New York City couple were left stunned after their Ring camera captured a stranger in an elegant cocktail dress brazenly lounging on their living room couch while they were out of town.

The unidentified woman, whose motive remains a mystery, apparently convinced the doorman at the luxury apartment building in Long Island City to hand over the keys by posing as a dog walker.

The incident unfolded on July 24, when Queens residents Bill Kim, 28, a hardware engineer, and Yelim Kim, 28, a videographer, were on vacation in Yellowstone National Park. They received a Ring notification on their phones at 10:51 p.m., and second notification followed just three minutes later.

Knowing their dogs were staying with a friend, the couple checked the live feed—only to discover an unknown woman wandering around their apartment. Moments later, the camera went dark as the intruder noticed the device and tore it off the shelf.

The couple immediately dialed 911, but dispatched officers initially believed the call was a hoax.

“We had to convince them that like no, this is not a prank call. Like this is happening for real. Please get over there as fast as possible,” Bill explained to Realtor.com®.

While police were en route, the couple’s nearby friend, Shawn Oh, rushed over to the Halo LIC luxury apartment building, located at 44-41 Purves Street in Long Island City, to check on the unit.

“We just wanted someone we know to be there to talk to the police and things like that,” Yelim shared. “He decided on his own to go up there and confront the woman. I think he was mainly just trying to get her out of our unit.”

After Oh repeatedly knocked on the door, the intruder opened it and bizarrely claimed she was a “patient.” Oh managed to get her out of the apartment, but moments later, watched in disbelief as she fumbled through a large ring of keys and unlocked the door before walking right back inside.

When officers arrived around 11:15 p.m., they escorted the woman out of the building.

“Right as the police arrived, I heard them and their questions to her, and she was telling them the robots sent her to that location, and that she thought it was a pharmacy, or that it was where she was going to receive psychiatric care,” Oh explained. “But you know, with what we learned afterwards about her claiming to be a dog walker, I guess the story doesn’t make too much sense.”

The police reportedly transported the unidentified woman to a hospital.

Property key logs later revealed that the woman—who presented herself to the doorman as a dog walker—had checked out the keys to the couple’s one-bedroom apartment at 9:47 p.m.

“She had the keys for over an hour before we got the first notification,” Bill said. “She had multiple keys; who knows what else she was doing. I guess it’s possible that our camera didn’t pick up the motion, but usually it’s pretty good about picking it up.”

Neighbor Abeer Minhas, 38, overheard police mention that the woman had checked out several sets of keys, raising fears across the complex.

“Several of us neighbors … are quite concerned of this rumor because it could have been any of our units,” Minhas says. “You have a real incident where there is a break-in while a couple is on vacation… and the NYPD came there, and they did not take it at all seriously.”

The couple returned home the next night, on July 25, and searched their apartment for any missing items or damage. Thankfully, no items were missing, and minimal damage was made to the drywall behind the camera the intruder tore down.

However, their friends who had searched the apartment the night of the incident noticed a rag stuffed inside the apartment’s toilet. Because the couple had previously submitted a maintenance request for their oven, they were left unsure whether the rag was left by a repair technician or the intruder.

But unfortunately, the bizarre saga didn’t end there.

The following day, July 26, a friend alerted the Kims that the woman was spotted walking back toward the building, wearing the same distinctive outfit from the night before.

As the couple prepared to step out, they saw her approaching and sprinted to the lobby to alert security.

The doorman confronted the woman when she entered. While on her phone, she claimed she was there to meet someone. The doorman ordered her to wait in the lobby, but she slipped out on her own a few minutes later.

That night, when the couple called the police to follow up, they were stunned to learn no official police report had been filed during the initial response. They were forced to call 911 again just to get an officer dispatched to draft a formal incident report.

“I wish that the police had taken a report when they first arrived and done a little bit more investigating in if the woman was mentally ill and what had actually happened,” Yelim said.

The response from the building management, Goose Property Management, also left the Kims unsatisfied.

Despite immediately emailing Goose Property Management the night of the break-in, they only received a response the following Monday on July 27.

The email read: “Hi there. I’m sorry for the delayed response as we were out for the weekend. Furthermore, we apologize for the inconvenience here. Looping in Sarah from our service department to assist.”

The couple say they were extremely disappointed by management’s apparent lack of urgency in responding to the safety incident.

“I was really disappointed about their response,” Bill said. “I was mad because just the fact that they called it an inconvenience when we had our apartment broken into. It wasn’t just a simple inconvenience. [It was] a violation of our privacy and our safety.”

“We have no idea what happened during the time she wasn’t in our apartment,” Yelim added. “I feel like an hour is more than enough time to make copies [of our keys].”

The couple, who moved to Queens from Chicago in 2024 and pay approximately $4,300 a month in rent, were eventually given a lock change.

In subsequent building-wide emails, Goose Property Management claimed that the front desk staffing agency had “removed the staff member involved and reinforced the proper access and verification procedures.”

“You’re supposed to give your ID to get the spare keys,” Bill explained. “But then when she was caught in our apartment, she had her ID and keys, so somehow she was able to keep both.”

Management later claimed the doorman had simply “mistakenly released a resident’s guest the wrong key.”

Both Yelim and Bill have attempted to follow up with building management to gain more information on the incident, but have received no response. They then posted videos of the incident that have gone viral on TikTok.

“That’s the reason why we took it to social media because they were ghosting us,” Yelim shared.

Since the TikTok posts, the couple has received various comments and messages from users sharing their own negative experiences with Goose Property Management.

“It’s been really disheartening to listen to all those things, and it makes me pretty sad that something like this had to go viral just so that people can feel like they can connect to the situation,” Yelim explained.

“It does seem in general, like historically, they’ve just tried to brush it under the rug,” Bill added. “So we’re glad that our story has reached so many people, and it can’t really be ignored.​

The incident has left the couple “generally feeling unsafe” in their apartment, and raises questions relating to how the intruder may have known that the unit was empty, that they have dogs, or the building’s apartment numbering system.

Goose Property Management has also not responded to the couple’s pleas for more information.

“I feel like it would have been nice if they had worked with us to help us try and figure out what happened, get clarity on the incident, and get help resolving this situation,” Bill shared. “But it feels like from the very get-go we needed to fight them instead of us working together to figure out the issue.”

Meanwhile, Yelim noted that building gossip suggests management is trying to downplay the breach, allegedly telling another inquiring tenant that  “the intruder was unsuccessful in entering any of the apartments.”

“We’re just very uncomfortable with the fact that they’re trying to cover up the fact that this had happened,” Yelim said.

The couple has shared that they plan on moving out of the building very soon.  

The police have not publicly identified the intruder, and no formal charges have been announced.

Goose Property Management has not responded to repeated requests for comment from Realtor.com.