TYLER, Texas — The Tyler community is looking for a group caught on camera breaking into vehicles and stealing anything that they can find. Homes aren’t off-limits either.
“As soon as sunset hits, it's on,” Lisa Clemens, Azalea District resident, said.
She says her mother was sitting right next to the door when unwelcomed guests showed up.
“Somebody just hit the back door and slammed into it. And she's sitting, like, maybe 10 feet from the door. She's panicking," she said. “There was a light on in the room that they tried to come into. All the lights were on in the back of the house, even our motion lights came on. They're bold enough to come with lights on. They don't care.”
Before anyone could catch them, they vanished- off to find their next target. Kenneth Edwards and his wife, Lisa, live just five minutes away from Lisa Clemens in Andy Woods.
“It was around one in the morning. My wife decided to go outside to get her keys out of the car and make sure everything was locked up for the night before we went to bed. She came running back in and told me that she thought somebody had went through her car,” Edwards said.
He went outside to find both of their cars ransacked.
“All my papers were thrown all through the truck all over the ground outside the truck. And then I went and checked her car, we noticed her purse was gone,” he said.
Neighbors found his wife's purse in a storm drain down the street. He also recognized the men from surveillance footage because he saw them earlier that same day.
He said, “Me and my employees were standing out in my backyard, and two or three guys were coming down the street that I've never seen in the neighborhood before. I waved at them, they waved back said ‘hi.’ I said ‘hi,’ and they kept walking.”
Tyler Police Department is aware of the situation and is working to find the thieves.
A spokesman for the department, Andy Erbaugh, said, “The days of criminals breaking windows is declining because so many people leave their cars unlocked and they'll just steal everything in it. It's an amazing deterrent, what simply locking your car will do.”
It's unclear if the men breaking into cars are the same ones breaking into homes, but either way, Tyler PD says to call 9-1-1 immediately if you’re home during a break-in, lock yourself in a room and stay on the phone until they get there.
As far as your vehicles, locking them is a great place to start. Tyler PD also suggests installing lights on your roof with motion detection and security cameras in plain view, because they say one of the biggest deterrents for thieves is knowing that they’re being watched.