A man with a history of criminal convictions has been arrested for allegedly breaking into a sorority house at the University of California, Berkeley, where he is accused of watching young women shower and stealing their underwear. Courtney Alford, 45, was taken into custody by the Berkeley Police Department last Wednesday, following reports from sorority sisters who claimed to have seen an unfamiliar man lurking around the Alpha Chi Omega house.
The students reported to the police that they had discovered the intruder rummaging through a student’s room before he fled the premises around 6 a.m. Some students also reported sightings of a middle-aged man skulking around as early as 3 a.m. Upon reviewing the house’s security footage, officers found multiple instances of a man, believed to be Alford, moving in and out of the building until around 6:35 a.m. At one point, the man was seen leaving and returning in a different outfit, complete with a ski mask.
The unsettling incident occurred during the early morning hours when many students were returning from Halloween celebrations on the university’s Greek Row, an area populated with fraternity and sorority houses. During their investigation, police found that the intruder had stolen several pairs of the students’ underwear and a few slices of pizza.
Officer Byron White of the Berkeley Police Department told the Los Angeles Times that one student woke up to find Alford lurking near her bed, while another reported him spying on her while she was in the shower. White also mentioned that Alford was a known figure to the Berkeley Police Department, as an officer recognized him from one of the surveillance photos.
Alford was arrested without incident at his home in Castro Valley, California, on November 5. During the arrest, police discovered a collection of weapons, including parts of an assault rifle, high-capacity ammunition magazines, and over 900 rounds of ammunition.
Alford has a criminal history that includes convictions for burglary, grand theft, assault with a deadly weapon, making criminal threats, evading a peace officer, and numerous other charges, all within Alameda County. He is also facing a separate arraignment for another arrest, including a charge for a lewd act upon a child on November 18, just half an hour before a pretrial hearing for his alleged break-in at the UC Berkeley sorority house.
The Alameda County District Attorney’s Office has charged him with 15 offenses, including burglary, peeking, invading privacy, possession of a firearm by a felon, and unlawful entry, in addition to multiple criminal enhancements due to his extensive criminal history. Alford is currently being held at the Santa Rita Jail on a $275,000 bail.