A Ferndale man accused of installing a surveillance camera in the bedroom of a married couple who live next door was ordered Thursday to stand trial on felony home invasion and eavesdropping charges.
Police say Andrew N. Kaminski, 39, broke into the couple’s home to install the wireless camera and was arrested after he broke in again Aug. 17 to retrieve the camera from the bedroom.
Michael Price, a man who lived with the couple at the time in a separate room of their two-story house, described Thursday how he awoke from a nap to the sound of someone in the house.
Price testified the couple’s two dogs began scratching at his closed bedroom door on the second floor about 3:15 p.m. and he heard a voice he didn’t recognize.
Price said he called out but got no reply before running downstairs, then back upstairs to a bathroom where he looked out the bathroom window and saw Kaminski on a ladder below the window.
“He was stepping down a ladder and he was wearing latex gloves,” Price testified. “I said, ‘Andy, what the … are you doing?’”
Kaminski responded that he had left something in the house as he pulled the ladder away from the house, Price said.
Price called the husband, who told Price to call police.
Officers arrived quickly, Price said, and he saw them arresting Kaminski.
Police said that Kaminski admitted he had installed the camera in the bedroom and was interested in the wife, a woman in her 20s.
Police recovered the surveillance camera from Kaminski’s house and seized his home computer.
Kaminski has been jailed since his arrest on a $90,000 cash bond. Ferndale Judge Joseph Longo reduced the bond so that Kaminski can get out on bail if he raises 10 percent of the bond amount.
Defense attorney Nick Balberman asked for the reduction, noting that Kaminski had no criminal record.
“At worst, what we have is (a case) of a 21st century peeping Tom,” Balberman said. “When the facts of this case come out I’m very confident my client is going to be absolutely cleared.”
Oakland County Assistant Prosecutor Karie Miller said there is an ongoing investigation with the Kaminski case and suggested there may be more charges against the suspect.
The female victim “is traumatized by what has happened, to say the very least,” Miller said.
