By Brandi Makuski

One family in Plover says they’re still reeling from having found an intoxicated college student asleep on their living room sofa.

Plover resident Danielle Buelow says she was awakened by her 12 year-old daughter Hannah around 3 AM last Tuesday morning, who in turn had been awakened by the family dog. Hannah told her mother the dog was growling at something in the living room, and she complained to her mother about seeing lights on the wall, which convinced her a ghost was present.

“I looked down the stairs and saw the lights flickering on the wall,” said Danielle Buelow. “You could tell it was the lights from a cop car- I looked out the window and saw a car in the snow bank, so I just figured the cops were doing a traffic stop or something.”

Just as Buelow was about to go back to bed, she said she noticed something on her couch suddenly move.

“I flicked on the light switch, and as articulate as I am at 3 o’clock in the morning I said, ‘Woah, woah, woah- what are you doing in my home?'” Buelow said. “There was a girl on our couch; I have no idea who she was, she was just laying there wrapped in a blanket on our couch.”

Buelow said she sent her daughter back upstairs and confronted the woman, who was later identified as a 22 year-old graduate student from UWSP. Police officials have refused to release her name.

According to Buelow, the woman had taken off the leggings she wore because they were “soaked” before she laid on the couch. Once the woman woke, she began to dress, and kept saying she’d made a mistake by entering the home. Buelow said it was “obvious” the woman had been intoxicated because she slurred her words and emitted a strong odor of alcohol.

“She kept saying she wasn’t a bad person- I told her she wasn’t a bad person, she was just a drunk person who made the wrong choice by coming into my home,” Buelow said.

“I started yelling out my door for a cop because they were all over my neighborhood. I told her she needed to go talk to them because they were looking for her, they probably thought she was in a ditch somewhere,” Buelow said.  “But she took off out the back door. She took a pair of my husband’s tennis shoes and then disappeared. She left her boots behind.”

After she notified the police, Buelow said an officer walked through their house looking for the woman and to ensure the family was safe.

“Poor Hannah was shaking,” Buelow said. “I let the kids stay in my bed, but really, who’s going to go back to sleep after that?”

Buelow declined to press charges against the woman, saying she only wanted to make sure the woman was unharmed after leaving the home. Plover Police Captain Gary Widder said the woman contacted his department the following night.

Plover police were already nearby because of a reported slide-in on Hoover Avenue, but Widder said officers were unable to located the driver. The search eventually expanded to the Coventry Drive neighborhood, one block west of the accident where the Buelow Family lives.

“We subsequently caught up her with, but she wasn’t located until the next day,” Widder said, adding the woman voluntarily appeared in the police department in good health. Widder said she was charged with disorderly conduct and given a citation for failure to control her vehicle.

Widder said while this type of home invasion may be more common closer to the university, in Plover he said it happens “seldom”.

“It happens from time to time where people wander into somebody’s house because they’re too intoxicated, they forget where they live, or they mistake an apartment,” Widder said. “That’s what we see most often- people walk into an apartment complex and instead of entering one door they enter into the wrong place.”

Buelow said she’s no more afraid of living in her neighborhood after last week’s incident, and said her family plans to continue life as normal- which one exception.

“That’s the last time we don’t lock our doors at night,” she said. “We’re locking the house up for sure now.”

Hannah Buelow, a seventh grader at Ben Franklin Junior High, said she had no problem admitting she was “very scared”, but said she’s taking the incident as a life lesson.

“I think this tells other kids my age they need to be very observant,” Hannah said. “You have to be aware of your surroundings all the time.”