Security lapses frighten tenants at Chestnut Hill Village

by Tom Beck
Posted 1/26/23

Residents of the Village at Chestnut Hill, an apartment complex on the 7700 block of Crittenden Street next to the Market Square shopping center, are clamoring for management to increase security.

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Security lapses frighten tenants at Chestnut Hill Village

Posted

Residents of the Village at Chestnut Hill, an apartment complex on the 7700 block of Crittenden Street next to the Market Square shopping center, are clamoring for management to increase security after repeated instances of a man who is homeless entering the building and sleeping in common areas. Tenants believe the man may be violent.

“It's scary,” said resident Lynn Medley, who is retired. “We pay too much rent for this to be going on.”

Shay Collins, another resident of the Village at Chestnut Hill, said the man previously punched a hole in the basement wall after an incident in which police were called. Collins told the Local that when police asked the man why he wasn’t in a shelter, he said he had been kicked out for fighting. 

Medley said the unwelcome stranger seems to be seriously “disturbed,” and that residents just want him to get whatever help he needs before something happens. 

“When he looks at you it’s like he's looking through you,” she said. “We want him taken into custody, put into shelter, and to get the treatment that he needs.”

Collins said she’s so frightened that she actually bought a gun. 

“I never pictured myself being a gun owner,” she said. “I’m terrified.”

Collins said that the complex’s management team has responded to complaints by adding signs on doors, instructing residents not to let strangers into the building. But that hasn’t solved the problem, she said. 

“Every day he’s there,” she said. “It’s not about being frustrated, it’s about being fearful and scared to go into my own home. I moved to Chestnut Hill to get away from that type of stuff.”

The Village at Chestnut Hill’s management team failed to respond to the Local’s multiple requests for comment.

According to Collins, the man is tall – about 6’3” – and that residents have frequently seen the man in the building’s vestibule, basement and most recently the laundry room.

“I’m 5’5” on a good day,” she said. “I’m scared to walk by him.”

Collins has asked the complex’s management to hire security guards to patrol the buildings. 

There used to be a security guard patrolling the complex grounds in a police car when Collins first moved to her current building in 2018, she told the Local. At some point during 2020 or 2021, she said, she stopped seeing the security. 

“We asked for security which we once had,” she told the Local in a phone call. “That’s the fight that’s being put up.”

So far, Collins said, management hasn’t been receptive to her request.

Collins said she first started seeing the man in late September or early October. When she found him in the laundry room, she decided to make flyers to alert residents of the man’s presence, which she posted on her neighbors’ doors.

“I feel the need to protect me and my neighbors,” she said. “We’re scared.”