A burglary crew was involved in more than 20 thefts while targeting unsuspecting neighborhoods. However, their crime spree came to an abrupt halt when they finally picked the wrong home.
The Los Angeles area had become the target of a burglary crew suspected of committing at least 20 home burglaries in West Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley, according to Detective Timothy Kirkpatrick with the LAPD. The group’s crime spree saw the suspects making off with expensive stolen items in places like Granada Hills and Studio City, where at least three homes were hit.
“The M.O. [the burglars] were using, they were going along the side of the house into the rear yard and smashing one of the windows and going inside,” Detective Timothy Kirkpatrick explained. Their method was working too, as members of the home burglary crew were captured on the security camera videos of several different houses. However, that all came to an end when the thieves picked the wrong place to rob.
Surprisingly, after targeting several Southland communities over the course of months, their downfall came about when they entered a home while the homeowner was away. However, the unnamed homeowner was alerted to the burglary by home surveillance footage. Then, the burglars made their biggest mistake yet. They grabbed a designer purse as part of their bounty.
Unbeknownst to the criminals, the stolen designer purse contained a hidden tracking device. Since the homeowner had already been alerted to the burglary in progress, the tracker then allowed him to follow the thieves’ movements. With the tracker showing that the stolen purse was in Mar Vista, the homeowner decided to drive to the location.
“He had already seen surveillance footage from his house, and he saw the same vehicle parked in front of a house,” Detective Kirkpatrick explained. “He saw them fleeing from a house with property put inside of the car and quickly driving away,” the detective added, explaining that it was at that point the homeowner called the police to report what he had witnessed.
Thanks to the tracker, the unnamed homeowner was also able to relay to the police the stolen purse’s latest location, which was Inglewood. There, using one of their helicopters, investigators were able to witness the group of suspects attempting to break into a stolen safe that they had been seen taking from a Mar Vista home.
According to CBS News, three suspects were arrested at that time with police recovering several stolen items, including merchandise, firearms, and the stolen handbag that led to the burglary crew’s bust. “This is a significant arrest,” Kirkpatrick said. “The victim was definitely important in this one; assisting us and helping direct us to the suspects and where they were.”
I love a story with a happy ending, and this one takes the cake. While most stories about criminals getting their comeuppance from a victim involve the use of lethal force by a homeowner, this one is even better for a pretty important reason. Where a homeowner might be lucky to stop one criminal with a firearm while the rest make a run for it, this method proved more potent, allowing three bad guys to get busted.
Let this be a lesson for the rest of us. If you have something valuable that you don’t want to see walk off in the hands of a criminal, consider hiding a tracking device in it, such as this one from Amazon that’s made for wallets but could be used in a purse, car, bag, or other carrying case. It’s just one way to ensure you can locate your belongings if thieves happen to strike, and I think it’s genius.
This small precaution could also help clean up our streets, as this particular story shows us. While reclaiming stolen merchandise is great, leading the cops to career criminals like these makes it even better. When one tracking device helps three thieves face their consequences, I think that’s money well spent, and I’m sure the owner of the stolen designer purse with the concealed tracking device would agree.