Woman Recounts Terror When 'Weird' Smell Leads to Discovery of Man Under Hotel Bed: 'I Thought He'd Choke Me or Rape Me' (Exclusive)
"I thought that he will choke me or rape me or kill me in those seconds. I was like, 'that's it. That's it," Khomenko explained.
Khomenko says she is speaking out to help prevent further incidents from happening to other female solo travelers
Natali Khomenko always wanted to travel to Japan. So, to celebrate her 32nd birthday, she and her husband made a plan to travel there in the spring. However, at the last minute when her husband couldn't join her because of work, she decided to go alone.
'It was a present to me to go to Japan,' she tells PEOPLE.
The Ukrainian creative producer flew from her home in Thailand and arrived in Tokyo on March 29, checking into her hotel around 10 p.m. The next morning, she left her hotel around 10 a.m. to take in Tokyo's temples, Ueno Park, food markets and cafes. She arrived back at her hotel around 7:30 p.m.
'I was so tired,' she says by the time she returned to her hotel. 'I just laid down on my bed with my phone. I wanted to book a train from Tokyo.
Then she noticed a 'weird smell.'
'It was rotten. It was like a dead animal but a sweet odor,' she says. 'I realized the smell was coming from under the bed. And without any bad thoughts I just leaned forward to check under the bed. I leaned forward and I just saw him. I saw the eyes.'Khomenko says the man, who appeared to be in his 20s or 30s, was lying on his belly. 'His arms were bent a little bit. One of his legs was a little bit bent. He was very quiet. It was only the smell that helped me to spot him.'
She immediately screamed and watched in horror as the intruder dressed in all black crawled out from under the bed, stood up and stared at her.
'He was quietly staring at me for three seconds while I was screaming,' she says. 'And then he started to scream. I thought that he will choke me or rape me or kill me in those seconds. I was like, 'that's it. That's it.''
Khomenko says she was absolutely paralyzed with fear. 'I could not move,' she says. 'I was just screaming and standing very stiff.'
Seconds later, the intruder turned around and dashed out the hotel room door. She attempted to call the front desk. 'I started to dial the reception, but I could not because I was in panic mode, and I couldn't understand which number I should dial.'
Travelers in the next room heard her screams and called hotel staff, who then called police.
Khomenko says after a search of the room they found the intruder's power bank and a USB cable under the bed.
'It's just my thought that he definitely wanted to spend the night,' she says. 'Maybe he wanted to record me and that's why he took the power bank. Because the camera is taking a lot of batteries from the phone and that's why he needed to recharge it. He was prepared.'
Khomenko says she asked the hotel staff how the man could have gained access to her room. 'How did it happen that this person entered my room? And she didn't have an answer for me. She was like, 'I don't know. I don't know.''
After she spoke to the police, Khomenko says she checked her luggage to see if anything was missing.
'He didn't take anything,' she says.
She immediately checked out of the hotel and her husband booked her into another one. However, the rest of her trip was filled with anxiety. 'I didn't sleep at all in the new hotels,' she says. 'I was in shock. I could not sleep. I was talking to my relatives till 4 a.m.'
The hotel would later tell her that it didn't have cameras, making it difficult for police to identify the intruder. The hotel declined her request for $1,600 to recoup her expenses after the incident, she said, but did reimburse her for the three nights she planned to stay there.
Khomenko reached out to the Ukrainian embassy and on April 25 spoke out about the incident on TikTok in a post that has since gone viral.
'It was very scary,' she recalls. 'It was an absolute violation. All my experiences, my birthday, everything was ruined.'
Part of the reason she has spoken out, she says, is to prevent this from happening to other female solo travelers.
'I wanted to bring awareness," she noted. "A lot of solo travelers wrote to me that they're grateful that I shared with this this story because they could not imagine that it could happen, especially in Japan.'
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