ONLY ON 13: Residents worried about increasing crime in Spring Branch area

HOUSTON (KTRK) -- Residents in a Spring Branch area apartment complex are on alert after two warnings about crimes in their neighborhood.

Christopher Nguyen was inside his apartment Sunday night when he heard commotion outside his door.

"I heard a couple of little yelps, not really a big scream or anything. And that's what made me think they were goofing around," Nguyen said.

The noise turned out to be his upstairs neighbor being robbed at gunpoint. HPD tells Eyewitness News a man approached the 50-year-old woman on the stairs and demanded her purse. The suspect is described as a Hispanic male between the age of 25-30 and standing 5 feet 11 inches. He was wearing a bandana and got away in a red Ford Explorer.

"But it's just one of those things that's gonna happen wherever you're at. You just gotta be prepared," Nguyen said.

"It's a lucrative neighborhood. So of course it's going to be targeted. Then also too, easy access," Allecia Lanton said.

The complex, 9900 on Memorial, is a few blocks from Ikea off the Katy Freeway.

Complex management sent a warning to all residents about what happened. This warning came just a week after another one. In the first case, a resident caught someone trying to get in through their locked front door. That suspect was also a Hispanic male. No word on whether the two are related.

Lanton says getting those two letters was disturbing.

"Especially considering she was robbed at gunpoint because I don't think all the other vandalism or anything like that has ever been at gunpoint," she said.

Both Lanton and Nguyen tell abc13 security rides through all the time. But they wonder what else can be done to keep them safe.

"Any little thing helps with security whether it be extra lighting, even locked gates could definitely help," Nguyen added.

Nguyen says he has other ways of protecting himself and his family if he has to.