Woman Says Her Roommate Tried To Search Her Room, Accused Her of Theft, and Threatened To Call Police

In a Reddit post, one woman said a short-term living arrangement turned into a nightmare after her roommate decided she was responsible for some missing clothes and jewelry — and started acting like she had the right to go through every box, suitcase, and corner of her room.

She explained that she was an international student stuck in Washington, D.C., after campus shut down during the coronavirus lockdown. She had planned to go home after graduation, but travel delays left her in a temporary sublet, living mostly out of boxes and suitcases while she waited for a chance to leave. She said she had no interest in settling in and was really just trying to get through the weeks quietly. Then her housemate told her that several items of clothing and some jewelry were missing and said she believed she had taken them.

The roommate wanted to search her room alone. Not just glance around, but open boxes, look through suitcases, and go through her things. She refused. From her point of view, there was no reason to hand over her privacy to someone who could not even clearly say what was supposedly missing. For a little while, things stayed tense but manageable. Then she caught her roommate inside her room while she was gone, already trying to search through her belongings without permission.

After that, the situation got worse fast. According to the post, the roommate said she would call police if she did not agree to let her search everything. With no lock on the bedroom door, she started putting her valuables into suitcases and using small locks just to get some peace of mind. But the next twist was the part she said she never saw coming. A day after she posted about it, she came home from getting groceries and found her roommate in her room again, with boxes spread out on the bed and shoes laid out on the floor as if she were building a case against her from the contents of her own property.

This time she called the non-emergency police line, along with her landlord and property manager. When an officer arrived, the roommate could not show proof that the things she was pointing to belonged to her, while the woman still had receipts for much of what was in the room. The officer warned the roommate to stop, but that was not the end of it. As she started locking up her belongings that night, she realized some of her own things were actually missing. These were items she had barely unpacked, which was why she had not noticed sooner.

She then asked to look through the roommate’s room with the roommate present. At first the roommate denied taking anything, but eventually allowed it. The woman said that the second she stepped inside, she started recognizing things from her own room. Shopping bags and empty boxes she knew were hers had been taken and used as decoration. Then she found more. According to the post, some of her belongings were hidden behind clothes in the closet, under a cardboard panel, and more of her purses were under the bed. She snapped photos, left the apartment, and called police again from outside.

She later said police returned her recovered belongings and told her the roommate had also been trying to sell several items online. One of the stolen pieces, she wrote, had been a timepiece inherited from her grandfather. She broke her lease, booked a flight home, and tried to put the whole thing behind her. Then came one last strange turn: she said she received a call from someone identified as her roommate’s psychiatrist, and during that conversation the roommate claimed that owning some of her things made her feel more confident and less insecure. The woman said she did not forgive her and only wanted the contact to stop.

Read the full Reddit story here:

How would you react if someone accused you of stealing — and it turned out they were the one hiding your things?