A three-year-old boy has been consistently trying to convince his mother that he's been seeing a "man with a light" outside his window for three nights in a row.
The parents didn't believe him at first and thought that he was only imagining things.
"I thought, obviously he's just had a bad dream," said the boy's mother, Melissa Rodrigues.
But the boy wasn't discouraged. On June 26, he finally got his parents' full attention after he let out a disturbing scream.
"At 5:30 in the morning he let out an absolutely gut-wrenching scream from his room," said Rodrigues. "I knew something wasn't right."
The boy's parents decided to go outside the house and inspect the surroundings. To their surprise, they discovered a set of footprints in their backyard. Since it is the middle of winter in New Zealand, their yard is covered with some frost which made the set of footprints easily recognizable.
Apart from the footprints, they also learned that the gate in their backyard was left open and swinging widely. Lastly, they noticed that some tools and extension cords were missing from their shed.
At this point, Melissa and her husband finally believed that what their son had been telling them the past few nights were true after all.
They immediately called the police and reported the incident. The next day, Melissa and her husband thought about securing their house in an attempt to properly identify the intruder.
The option of setting up a CCTV was instantly ruled out since the family thought it was too expensive. Instead, they used an old smartphone where they downloaded an app called Salient Eye. The app works with the smartphone's camera which would then capture images every time it senses a motion. The captured images are then sent straight to the owner's email.
Armed with the app-loaded smartphone, the family prepared for the intruder's next visit by placing the device beside their garage window, which is opposite to the house. For that night's "mission," Melissa and her husband had to send their son to his grandmother's house for a sleepover. They left the lights on the porch turned on in order for the phone's camera to capture anything even at night.
It didn't take long for the couple to see the app in action. At around 4:40 a.m., Melissa started seeing her email getting flooded with photos sent from the app.
"It gave me the shock of a lifetime because, even though I was waiting for it, I wasn't expecting to see him," said Melissa who immediately called the police after seeing the images.
It turned out that the intruder was a 15-year-old delinquent who already has a police record and has been referred to Youth Aid.
"The attending police staff were able to recognize him from the images captured on the device," said Senior Sergeant Anita Dixon of Kapiti Police. She added that using the surveillance app was a really good idea.
