About a block east of Lincoln Park, Eric had a visitor tonight who raised his suspicions – read on for his story:
This is what Eric wrote to his neighborhood mailing list, and WSB:
Tonight around 7:30 a guy in a red ski jacket knocked on our door. … He had a pitch for something. It went on for about a minute and I couldn’t really tell where he was going with it, but it seemed like a scam. I told him that if he didn’t have a leave-behind brochure or a website, I didn’t want to talk to him any longer. He made remarks to me as he left and at that point I realized he was definitely not legit. People who legitimately canvas neighborhoods are trained to be polite, never offend their prospects. A minute later, he was at (neighbors’) house. I watched him through the window approach (neighbor) in her driveway. After about 3 minutes of this I could tell (neighbor) was uncomfortable so I went out to the front porch and told him the same thing I had told him at our back door. He argued a little, then made a threatening comment and quickly made his way down Hemlock and south on 46th. I called the police.
Eric did take a photo of the man in case it’s needed for reference. In a followup note to the neighborhood list and WSB, the neighbor he mentions added:
He was talking in circles and never really got to the point of what he was trying to pitch. The only thing I got out of it was that he was trying “earn points” for something. He said a bunch of folks in the neighborhood had recently signed a petition. He showed me a page and I didn’t recognized any names. Plus I noticed the dates were from back in January. Definitely fishy… I have a feeling he was casing out the neighborhood.
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