SAN DIEGO -- A transient seen prowling around and peering in the window of a home near Stephanie Crowe's Escondido residence the night she was killed "just didn't look right," a former resident testified Thursday.

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Dawn Homa told jurors her future father-in-law knocked on her door around 7:30 p.m on Jan. 20, 1998.

She said he told her and her fiance he had seen someone looking into his home, which was attached to the couple's residence in northern Escondido, near Valley Center Road and Lake Wohlford Road.

Rather than call the police, Homa said she and her future husband decided to jump in his truck and follow the prowler, who had left the property and started walking south on Valley Center.

"We were trying to figure out who he was," the witness said. "He just didn't look right."

Homa testified that she and her fiance followed the transient -- she identified him in court as Tuite -- down the road to Lake Wohlford, where they lost sight of him at a Lutheran church.

The woman told her fiance to warn church officials a prowler was in the area.

As the couple left the church parking lot, they saw the transient mumbling and looking up to the sky with his arms outstretched, Homa testified.

Her fiance said, "What the hell is he doing?" Homa testified.

"It was just not right," Homa said.

She said she went to her mother's house the next morning, but didn't notice any police activity across the road at the Crowe residence until she returned home.

Homa said he talked to officers gathered near the murder scene and told them "a very scary guy" was in the neighborhood the night before.

The woman told the officers she had called police when she saw the intruder, but nobody responded.

Tuite, 34, was charged two years ago with the seventh-grader's murder.

Special Assistant Attorney General David Druliner told the jury that Tuite, a diagnosed schizophrenic, had an "obsession" to find an ex-girlfriend named Tracy and stalked and harassed other girls who looked like Stephanie.

Sheldon Homa testified he grabbed his ax and confronted Tuite after the defendant peered into his window.

"I asked him 'What's up?,'" Sheldon Homa testified. "He said he was looking for some girl named Tracy."

When Tuite said a neighbor had told him he could find Tracy near Homa's residence, Homa told him he was lying and told him he needed to leave.

Tuite appeared clumsy and fidgety, as though he had been using methamphetamine, Sheldon Homa testified.

A science teacher testified that a homeless man she identified as Tuite was seen "shouting and carrying on" near a bus stop in Escondido the night of the murder.

Rebecca McCaslin said she saw the defendant near Grand Avenue and Date Street around 6:30 p.m. on Jan. 20, 1998, as she drove her son home from hockey practice.

The witness said Tuite was gesturing with his left hand and thrusting a pointed object -- possibly a pen into the air with his right hand on that night more than six years ago.

"It was not shiny. It could have been a pen," McCaslin testified. "He was shouting and carrying on. I was keeping my eye on him."

The witness, who at the time taught at the middle school Stephanie Crowe attended, testified she had seen the "homeless," "quiet" "panhandler" several times near the Escondido library, and once in front of a Vons.

"Never, ever, had I ever seen him put on a performance like that," McCaslin testified. "He was very animated and having a very animated conversation with someone who was not there."

The witness said she heard about Stephanie's death the next morning at school, and days later notified Escondido police about what she had seen.

"I said I saw a transient that normally I've seen at the library, at a bus stop," McCaslin testified.

She said she was later shown a photo of Tuite and testified that the person in the photograph was the same man she saw on the street near the bus stop.

The witness said she knew the bus route near where Tuite was standing went up to the rural area where the Crowe family lived.

The victim's brother, Michael Crowe, and friends Josh Treadway and Aaron Houser were originally arrested in connection with Stephanie's murder. But the District Attorney's Office dismissed the charges when, just before trial, the victim's blood was found on Tuite's red sweat shirt.