'I woke up to find stranger asleep in a tent in my front garden - I couldn't believe it'
Erika White was left baffled by the 'brazen audacity' of a stranger who pitched his tent on her front garden whilst she slept
A mum was baffled when she looked outside and found a stranger had pitched a tent in her front garden overnight.
Erika White, 38, said her son initially spotted the makeshift home on the lawn of her end-of-terrace urban home at 6.35am. The baffled finance analyst confronted the brazen trespasser - and said initially he ignored her polite request to move on from her front garden in Dartford, Kent.
She "couldn't believe the audacity" of the sleepy camper and it was only when she told him she'd call the police he upped and went. Astonished Erika, who lives with her seven-year-old daughter and sons, 14 and eight, said: "It was the absolute audacity of it. It's so brazen."
Erika explained it was one of her young sons who first spotted the tent. She said: "My littlest boy was looking out the window to see what the weather was like and he said to me 'mummy, there's a tent outside'.
"It literally took up the whole front garden. I went out. I didn't want to be aggressive."
"He looked at me. I said 'excuse me - do you realise you're in my front garden in a tent? Could you move yourself please?'"
She said when he unzipped the tent she could see he had a family sized strawberry gateau inside with him. Erika thinks the uninvited guest pitched his tent away from her garden before moving it in from the side - because her doorbell camera didn't go off.
She said with hindsight she remembers hearing noises at about 5am - but thought it was her scheduled tumble dryer load, on Monday (24). She confronted him at about 6.35am - but when he hadn't left she went out again at 6.50am.
"I told him 'if you don't go I'm going to have to call the police'," she added. He finally moved on around 7.05am.
Confused Erika speculated he could be a worker at a nearby fruit picking farm as many commute along the road, and he did not speak English as a first language.
She said he was presentable and didn't seem homeless - further adding to her confusion.
