KISSIMMEE, Fla. – An Alachua County family visiting Walt Disney World last weekend says they discovered what they suspect was a peephole scratched out of the back of a mirror in their Osceola County motel room's bathroom.
[UPDATE: No charges in peephole case]
Gary Pride noticed the small black hole in the mirror after his 14-year-old daughter took a shower in their room at the Champions World Resort on West U.S. 192.
Holes in the walls behind both the Prides' bathroom mirror and one in the bathroom of an adjacent room were large enough to allow someone in the adjacent room to remove his mirror and hold a video camera to the hole in the Prides' mirror.
After removing their mirror, Pride's daughter held a video camera to the hole on the back side of the mirror and the video clearly showed Pride on the bathroom-side of the mirror.
"We weren't really expecting to find it and your stomach drops when you actually see it," Pride told Local 6.
He called the Osceola County Sheriff's Office, which spent about an hour Saturday investigating but did not find enough evidence of a crime to write a formal report, said sheriff's spokesman Twis Lizasuain.
"If we receive additional information that would make this a criminal matter, we will be happy to look into this further," she said.
An examination of the bathroom in Room 112 revealed a similarly large hole in the wall behind the bathroom mirror, allowing anyone in Room 112 to place a video camera lens directly on the scratched-out hole in the bathroom mirror in the Pride's room, number 113.
"I'm sure they could have," Pride said of the potential of his family being videotaped in the bathroom. "Hopefully, they weren't (videotaping) that particular night."
Hotel employees declined to comment to Local 6 about the apparent peephole.
But Lizasuain and Pride said the motel told deputies the holes in the walls were remnants of air conditioning installations that occurred several months ago.
Pride noted that explanation does not account for the scratched out hole in his mirror.