HAGERSTOWN, Md. — A Maryland woman who was filming herself dancing in her living room last month inadvertently captured images of a man breaking into her second-floor apartment via her balcony.
Angel Moises Rodriguez-Gomez, 36, is charged with stalking, burglary, second-degree assault and malicious destruction of property. He was booked into the Washington County Detention Center, from which he was later released on bond.
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Hagerstown police officers responded shortly before 10:30 p.m. Nov. 22 to the Bradford Apartments, where Hannah Viverette lives. Viverette told the officers a man had climbed to her balcony and entered her home without permission.
Viverette was able to escape the apartment and run to a neighbor’s home, police officials said. She was also able to provide footage of what happened thanks to the social media app TikTok.
Viverette told NBC Washington that she dances to unwind at night and often records her dance moves and uploads the videos to TikTok. She was doing so the night in question when her balcony door suddenly opened.
She is visibly startled in the footage.
“When he first opened the door, I was prepared, for a few moments, to die,” Viverette told the NBC affiliate.
Watch Viverette’s video footage below.
In the video, Viverette looks off-camera in a panic.
“Who are you?” she asks. “Who are you?”
She is heard telling her Alexa device to turn off the music as she continues to question the man about his identity. She asks him several times to please get out of her apartment.
“Am I your friend?” he asks.
“No,” she responds.
“Are you sure?” the man asks.
“Yes,” Viverette tells him as she grabs her cellphone and continues to demand he leave.
She runs to the door and, continuing to demand he leave, begins knocking on her neighbor’s door. The man stands in the balcony doorway for several seconds before retreating and closing the door.
When her neighbor answers her door, Viverette asks if she can come in. The footage ends at that point.
Viverette posted the footage over the weekend.
“That moment when you’re recording yourself dancing and your stalker climbs your second-story balcony to break in,” she wrote in the caption for the video.
As of Wednesday, the footage had been viewed more than nine million times.
Viverette told NBC Washington that she did not know Rodriguez-Gomez but recognized him as a man who lived in a nearby building.
“I had seen him before, and it took me about three seconds to put it all together that this is the man that’s out in his truck, that watches me from my balcony, that’s made advances at me,” she told the news station. “In that moment, I just knew that it wasn’t going to be good.”
In an interview with Fox 5, she said Rodriguez-Gomez initially stood there, smiling at her and muttering in Spanish.
“He kept his hands in his pockets, which is what initially scared me,” she said. “Obviously, the fact that an intruder is coming in, but he wouldn’t take his hands out of his hoodie. And I was worried that he had a weapon on him.”
Rodriguez-Gomez was brought in for police questioning two days after the incident and was subsequently arrested, authorities said.
Viverette said she’s worried now that he has been released on bond.
“The only thing law enforcement has been able to tell me is that a lot of it has to do with not wanting to house him due to COVID,” she said, according to Fox 5. “I just really don’t think it’s fair that he’s walking freely right now and I have to watch my back at every angle.”
Viverette said she is currently not staying at her apartment at night but said she refused to allow Rodriguez-Gomez to drive her away from her home. She also said that she will not stop dancing.
“He’s not going to take that away from me. Absolutely not,” Viverette said. “I’m not going live in fear.”
Cox Media Group
