Dakota Williams, 23, was lying on her bed in her Colorado Springs rental home when she says something suspicious caught her eye.
Fake smoke detectors are appearing in some bedrooms across the United States.
Dakota Williams, 23, was lying on her bed in her basement Colorado Springs rental home when she says something suspicious caught her eye. “I noticed that there were actually two smoke detectors in the room,” Williams says. ”I started to kind of fidget with it and my stomach dropped.”
Inside the smoke detector was a hidden camera.
Small lenses in ordinary-looking smoke detectors can secretly record someone’s every move and transmit video live, allowing whoever is watching to spy in real-time.
Williams tells Inside Edition she was terrified. She says her first thought was that her landlord’s boyfriend may have been behind it. Williams says she ran out of her room and the boyfriend was on the staircase, apparently aware that he had been discovered.
“It was just a really scary moment of, who knows what could have happened if I didn’t get out when I did,” Williams says.
The 23-year-old later returned with Colorado Springs police. Body cameras were rolling as police questioned the man, Jamil Brown. The landlord said she had no idea what was going on and was not charged.
The suspect confessed to the police that he did buy a camera and that it was in Williams’ room.
Brown is a major with the United States Space Force, the newest branch of the armed forces. He was found guilty of invasion of privacy.
Williams’ mother and stepfather say they were shocked to learn that Brown was in the military. “Really disappointed in him, you know, especially seeing his position of authority,” the young woman’s mother says.
“This is someone that’s in really high power,” Williams’ stepfather says. “Could have spiraled out of control at any moment in that situation. Especially if he started to really dig into what he was about to lose.”
Inside Edition collected numerous reports of fake smoke detectors. One was discovered in a Massachusetts home earlier this month. In another incident, a man used a fake smoke detector to spy on unsuspecting house guests in Nevada.
“I changed in there, I slept in there, just everything. I’ll never get the peace of knowing that he doesn’t have my videos. I think he’ll forever probably have them,” Williams says.
Brown did not respond when Inside Edition attempted to speak with him on his way into court.
Brown was found guilty of planting the camera and was sentenced to community service and ordered to have no contact with the victim and register as a sex offender.
