UPDATE: The NOPD is looking for the suspect in the video. He is being sought on a count of simple battery.
NEW ORLEANS - "This was middle of the day! Now, every time someone walks behind me, I jump!"
This time of the year is scary enough as it is. The cob webs and skulls outside of Samantha Smith's home are meant to frighten trick or treaters, but what happened to her this week from a random stranger left her frantic.
"I screamed so loud, all of my neighbors came outside," Smith said.
The creepy encounter happened Wednesday in broad daylight at 2:50 pm on the 900 block of Port Street.
In her surveillance video, you can see a young man wearing a black jacket walking down the street. He stops, turns around and heads straight for her.
"If you look at my camera footage, he just walks down the street. Just stops right there and watches me not pay attention to him and then he runs after me and punches me in the back of the head. It's absurd!!" Smith said.
The punch sent Smith tumbling to the ground. She quickly got up and ran up her stairs towards her husband and dog named Steve while the attacker rushed down the road.
"My husband ran right out! The front door was wide open.He must've seen my dog standing right in the doorway cause he hauled just straight down the street," Smith said.
Her husband quickly appears on the front stoop, carrying a semi-automatic rifle. Smith says he happened to be showing the rifle to a friend at the same time she approached. Her husband puts it back inside before eventually giving chase. Smith says she's never seen her attacker before, but right before this punch, he apparently spoke with her neighbor.
"He said, 'Can you give me a dollar?' And she's like no. And he said, 'Can you give me like two dollars?' And she said 'No man, I don't have any money. And then he walked away and said, 'Well somebody's gotta give me something!' He didn't have to do that, if he needed a couple of bucks he could've asked me."
Police are looking into the incident, but if they end up catching him, she wants to meet him.
"If they brought him to me right now, I would talk to him. I wanna talk to him. I wanna talk to his mom. I wanna see what's going on with him that would make him do something like that," Smith said.
Smith also says she had her cell phone in her hand at the time, but the attacker did not get away with it. She says this is the first time something like this has happened to her, but she also says the crime and theft in the area, has gotten worse.