House Prowlers and Office Break-Ins

Last night (March 18th) at 9:45PM we were sitting on our couch in our front room when my wife noticed a white passenger van (an older Dodge, I think) with dark windows stop out side our home. A young Asian man got out of the passenger side and casually walked up our side drive. We have an au pair who lives in an apartment in the rear of our house, so we momentarily convinced ourselves that he was a visitor. But we have an alarm that chimes whenever someone enters; after a minute or so it became clear he wasn’t being let in (and we texted our au pair, who told us she was away). By the time it occurred to us that something else was clearly going on, the man was exiting our driveway (apparently empty-handed) and getting back into the van. I walked out the front door and stood on our porch. They drove down the street, only to stop halfway down the block just south of us (on Burke), where the man again jumped out of the van and walked up a neighbor’s driveway. That’s when I called 911 and gave them a description of the vehicle. I did not get the license plate. I don’t know if anything came of it, but I thought I should let others know in case the men were not apprehended.

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A local office building was broken into Saturday night March 9th.  The office building is located on the edge of Wallingford and in Fremont near Stoneway. A hired U-Haul backed up against the office door and the thieves used crow bars to pry open the doors. This was caught on the video camera. The people broke in and took 9 minutes to clear out one of the businesses located in the office complex of all the monitors, laptops, electronics and anything else they could carry in that 9 minutes.  The thieves were wearing gloves and stole coats, jackets, and soft materials as padding for the stolen items.  They knew what they were doing and were very organized.  They stopped what they were doing when the timer hit 9 minutes and left everything in place that they had not loaded in their rented truck.  The empty U-Haul was tracked to a location but the items were not recovered.  The office complex has installed new security systems and more cameras. However, be aware that people are becoming more organized.  If you happen to see moving trucks emptying a business at an odd hour it is probably not legitimate. This was the second time our offices were hit in a three week time period. So be on the lookout for suspicious behavior. It costs us all in the long run.