A woman has been left terrified to be in her own home after receiving up to 30 unwanted takeaways every night for the last two years.
Diane Maines, 58, has been left unable to sleep and said her mental health has deteriorated during the ordeal. She has tried everything to get to the bottom of the unnerving mystery.
She is so fed up with being bombarded by unwanted food that she now barricades her front door with wheelie bins to try and deter the delivery drivers.
The suspected stalking campaign began at the beginning of the first Covid lockdown in April 2020, and since then food deliveries from multiple restaurants have been arriving at different times throughout the evening.
At first, Diane started receiving knocks on her door for takeaway deliveries, with five or six orders coming each night for several nights. But the problem got worse, and she began receiving 20 or 30 separate orders.
The takeaways, ordered through Just Eat, are all cash on delivery and all with different names, accounts and phone numbers attributed to the orders.
Now, two years later, the issue is continuing, with Diane, who lives on her own, still receiving orders at her door as recently as Friday, December 9.
The customer service agent is no further forward to finding out why this is happening, and said the ordeal has left her struggling to sleep and extremely anxious.
She said: “I don’t know what to do. I keep myself to myself and only have a small circle of friends, so I don’t know who would want to do this to me.
"I feel like I’m going mad. It’s really affecting my mental health and sleeping. Every time I hear a car go up the street I’m anxious.
"I have no idea why this is happening. It’s getting frightening and I’m terrified to be in my own home.
“During the first lockdown it was constant, with 20 or 30 orders coming a night, totalling thousands of pounds worth of food being delivered to my door.
"Now it can go a few months without happening but then last Friday (December 9) I had another six sent to me. I’ve had to change my life to try and deal with this and I just want it to stop.”
The orders are regularly from different takeaways around South Tyneside, normally ordered through Just Eat, and have also included deliveries from as far as Jesmond in Newcastle and Seaham, County Durham.
To try and stop the deliveries, Diane has even tried blocking her door with wheelie bins, leaving a note warning takeaway drivers that the order is likely a hoax, and has also taken the batteries out of her video doorbell.
A year after the deliveries began, Diane reported the matter to the police in March 2021 in an effort to find out who was behind the harassment.
A Northumbria Police spokesperson said: “We can confirm an investigation was launched after a woman reported receiving a series of unwanted takeaways from an unknown person to her address in the Hebburn area.
“Officers are treating the reports as suspected stalking, with reports made between March 2021 and December 2022.
“Extensive enquiries are ongoing and anyone with information which could assist the investigation is asked to get in touch."
