Woman's story of a stranger in her flat prompts social media debate on locking front doors

A woman named Laura has shared an account on the social platform Threads about an incident in her home in Latvia, saying it made her reconsider the habit of leaving the front door unlocked even when everyone is inside. In her family, the door is not normally locked, which apparently allowed a stranger to get in. The post drew many responses, with other users describing their own experiences in the comments.

What happened

According to Laura, her husband had gone to work for two hours, the children were in their room looking at their phones, and she was resting while watching a film, half asleep. Suddenly she heard her youngest child shout loudly and a door slam. The children later said there had been someone unfamiliar in the home. She then called her husband, who was at work at the time.

Other users' experiences

In the comments, a user named Elīna described an incident from about ten years ago: she had not locked her flat door and got into the bath, then later found a strange man sleeping in an armchair in the living room. It turned out he had mixed up stairwells.

Katrīna wrote that residents of Riga's Old Town had found people pulling at their door handles even when the building had an access code system. She also mentioned a case in Ventspils in which a neighbour's son entered a private house and stole her mother's phone from a jacket pocket. Another user wrote that she regularly heard someone pressing her flat's door handle, and on one occasion the stairwell light came on and someone really did approach her door.

Not every case involves bad intent. Katrīna admitted that she once absent-mindedly walked into the flat one floor below, where a surprised neighbour greeted her.

Other commenters said that on one New Year's Eve, unlocked flats in a stairwell were burgled and wallets were taken from bags, while another described a friend's flat from which part of the belongings was stolen while the residents slept.