Death threats on a doorbell cam: couple describe 18 months of neighbour abuse

Imagine being threatened on your own doorbell camera. For one couple in south-west London, it became part of daily life.

Ben Stanley, 32, and his girlfriend Emma Williams, 31, say their downstairs neighbour Drina Gray, 52, turned their home into a place they wanted to escape. They have now told their story in a new Channel 5 series, At War With Next Door, which starts at 8pm tomorrow.

What happened?

Mr Stanley, a cyber security manager, bought the former council flat in Wandsworth in 2022. In April 2023, the local authority moved in a new tenant below him: Gray, a dog sitter.

He knocked to introduce himself. She did not open the door and shouted at him to go away, he says. Then the noise began.

He says she hoovered the hallway in the middle of the night, shouting and swearing while drunk, and took parcels from outside his door. Once Miss Williams moved in, he says, Gray became jealous and made crude comments about him in front of her.

The doorbell cameras

Mr Stanley says Gray "weaponised the cameras" on his property. If she pressed the Ring doorbell, it recorded her and sent the clip to his phone. She also stood in front of the hallway camera and left messages at all hours.

One recording has her saying: "Come round here again and I'll put my dog around your neck."

Things got worse after he reported her to the RSPCA (the animal welfare charity) for kicking her dog. She then suggested she would kill him, either by sending her former partner with a gun or by burning down the flat.

What's next?

After repeated complaints to Wandsworth Council and the Metropolitan Police, four detectives arrived, broke down Gray's door and arrested her.

In June 2025 at Kingston-upon-Thames Crown Court, she was jailed for three years and four months. The judge said she had made her neighbours' lives "hell".

Gray pleaded guilty to harassment, two counts of criminal damage and using threatening words and behaviour over six months in 2024. Mr Stanley says he logged 140 separate incidents across 18 months.