ORMOND BEACH, Florida — When Volusia County Sheriff’s deputies caught up to a suspicious man loitering about a neighborhood near Ormond Beach, Florida Wednesday morning, Charles Snowden claimed he was looking around for tennis balls.
The 41-year-old Snowden had a harder time explaining what he was allegedly doing in a stranger’s house dressed in only his underwear. Deputies were dispatched to the neighborhood after the Volusia Sheriff’s Office received a call at 7:16 a.m. reporting an intruder inside a house on Woodcrest Drive. “I just woke up. There was a strange man walking in my house,” the caller told the Sheriff’s Office’s call-taker. “He’s walking down the street right now. He’s in underwear — ripped.”
The victim told deputies that she awoke to the sound of an intruder coming through her sliding glass doors and then going through the silverware drawer in the kitchen. Afraid to confront the man, the victim waited until the intruder walked out the front door and then called for help. As best as the victim could tell, nothing was taken from her house.
About six minutes after she called for help, deputies spotted Snowden in the neighborhood, dressed only in a pair of boxer shorts. He claimed to deputies that he had been visiting a resident in the area and was looking for tennis balls for his friend’s dog. His explanation for being stripped down to his boxer shorts: Snowden said he took his clothes off because he had gotten them wet while doing some pressure washing earlier in the day. He also denied being in the victim’s house.
Deputies, however, made one observation that may have explained Snowden’s strange behavior: They say he appeared to be under the influence of an undetermined substance.