A 20-year-old woman in Adelaide's northern suburbs, Ella Kearns, has described a terrifying early-morning ordeal in which a shirtless stranger repeatedly tried to break into her home, only for attending police officers to laugh with the man rather than take the incident seriously. The case has drawn attention because Ms Kearns rang triple zero three times as the intruder returned again and again, yet officers sent him away without taking a statement, leaving her feeling dismissed and unsafe in her own home.

Ms Kearns was asleep alone at about 4am in her Smithfield unit when a man calling for a woman named "Bridget" tried to force entry through her window and front door. Police attended twice but merely spoke with the man before letting him go, and on his third return Ms Kearns recorded him claiming to be a former footballer offering massages who had arranged to meet a woman via a hook-up app. She hid in her bathroom on the advice of the emergency call operator while her cat's movements helped her track the intruder's position outside, and no formal statement was ever taken from her despite the repeated break-in attempts.