“Heard heavy footsteps coming up the stairs,” Kevin Root recalled to KDVR-TV about a heart-stopping 3:30 a.m. encounter at his family's Denver home last month. “As a parent, you know your kids’ footsteps, and this was not any of our kids.”

The unsettling noises woke up Kevin and his wife, Sarah, the station said — and Kevin got up to find out where the sounds were coming from.

'It feels unsettling that something so invasive and violating is permitted to happen and the person is back on the street.'

“We had our door slightly cracked, and I saw the shadow go by, and that just is a sinking feeling,” Sarah added to KDVR.

Turns out an intruder had broken the lock on the Roots' front door — and now he was on the staircase, the station said.

“As I heard him coming up, I said, ‘Who is this?

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