A locked, gated neighborhood park.

A stranger waiting by the entrance.

A teen just trying to follow the rules—and suddenly questioning everything.

Was she being cautious or just plain cold?

Read on for the story.

AITA for not letting a random lady into my neighborhood park?

So I(18F), my boyfriend, and my sister went to my neighborhood park the other day near my house.

The park was just renovated a couple of months ago and a fence with a locked gate was put up to prevent homeless people, and people from the apartment complex across the street from getting in.

There are also cameras in the park.

(The kids in the apartment complex ripped a children’s seesaw from the ground right after it was renovated before the fence was put up. And homeless people kept sleeping on the benches and park tables).

Sounds…safe.

The HOA provides key cards to all of the residents of the neighborhood after you registered for them and paid for them.

Anyways, as we we’re leaving the park to walk back to my place an unfamiliar lady pulls up in a car outside the gate and asks to be let in and claims to have left or misplaced her key card.

But then she immediately contradicts herself and asks how to get the key cards.

Sounds sus.

I explain that I’m not entirely sure as my parents were the ones to receive the cards but that I knew that you had to go through the HOA to receive them.

She then asks if I could let her in to let her child play.

I apologize and tell her that I don’t want to risk getting in trouble with the HOA as I don’t know their policies on people without keywords being let in unsupervised (you can have up to 2 guests per keycard).

She pushes a little and I reiterate what I had already told her.

Now, GO AWAY.

She then relents and gets back into her car.

The three of us (my sister, boyfriend, and I) then leave the park and close the gate behind us.

This is when I get a little skeptical.

The lady hesitates and watches us leave before I see her leave the parking lot and then turns out of the neighborhood entirely and towards the apartment complex.

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But still I can’t help but feel a little bit bad so AITA?

Most commenters agreed that the teen did the right thing by not letting in a stranger who couldn’t even keep her story straight.

This person puts it into perspective.

This person says she most definitely did the right thing. 

And this person says she’s sure she figured it out.

Not everyone deserves the benefit of the doubt.

Especially when they can’t even keep their lie straight.

If you liked that story, read this one about grandparents who set up a college fund for their grandkid because his parents won’t, but then his parents want to use the money to cover sibling’s medical expenses.