Boulder woman wakes up with stranger’s hands in her underwear — and her boyfriend beside her

Early yesterday morning in Boulder, a college-age woman living in an apartment on the 1800 block of 22nd Street awakened to find a man’s hands in her underwear — and although her boyfriend was sleeping beside her, the hands weren’t his.

According to Boulder Police Department spokesman Sarah Huntley, the search for this intruder, who ran out of the apartment when the woman screamed and her boyfriend chased after him, is a top priority.

“There hasn’t been an incident like this in town for quite some time,” she says, “and we’re very concerned about it. This wasn’t somebody coming into an apartment to steal something. It was physical contact with another person, and there’s no indication the victim knew who he was.”

With that in mind, police are fanning out in a two-block radius of the apartment complex this morning to distribute fliers about the attack, complete with advise about locking doors and windows.

“We live in a college community, and we find that there’s a sense of safety that sometimes isn’t the wisest course of action,” she notes, adding that the suspect apparently entered the victim’s apartment through an unlocked door.

The fliers don’t include a sketch of the suspect. “We had hoped to get one,” Huntley concedes, “but we didn’t get enough of a description. The victim and her boyfriend didn’t feel they saw enough of him to be able to work in a meaningful way with our sketch artist.”

That means police and people in the area have only a bare description of the assailant: a white or light-skinned Hispanic of college age who may have dark hair and was last seen wearing a long-sleeved gray, striped shirt.

No suspects have been identified yet, giving residents extra incentive to check their doors and windows before they go to bed. Whether their boyfriend is beside them or not.