This morning, we decided to take a drive to a local restaurant for some breakfast. First I went to the front door because a neighbor, Bob, had dropped off a few Christmas presents for us. This is important because Bob comes into the picture again when we go out to the car.
When we were ready to go, I walked up to the driver’s side to open the door and saw that my seat was pushed forward. “Weird, I don’t remember moving the seat to get anything in the back,” I thought to myself.
I opened the door and pushed the seat back. I immediately noticed that there was stuff everywhere. My fiancee, Evlin, opened her door at the same time and was just starring inside the car. The first thought in my mind was, “I don’t remember the Jeep being this dirty.” The second thought was something along the lines of, “Is Bob playing a trick on me?”
It was a few seconds later that I realized the car was broken into, and someone had trashed it while looking for anything valuable.
Evlin asked if anything was taken, so we started looking around without touching anything. A few bucks were missing, and that seemed to be it.
I called the police and they were over in about 10 minutes, because they just happened to be down the road at a neighbors house for the exact same thing. It’s been a problem in our neighborhood for the past few weeks, and we’ve seen numerous cars broken into and two stolen.
It’s a quiet neighborhood, but thugs be thugs and they can show up anywhere.
After the police did their thing and got some fingerprints, we started to look through what was left. Noting seemed to be missing except for the money, which was about $6, and the only thing they seemed to leave behind was some mud.
When the officer was asking his questions, he asked what I do for a living. I told him, and of course his first question was if I had any firearms in the car. I didn’t, of course, because I never leave any in there. Even being in a quiet neighborhood with nothing like this typically happening, I still wouldn’t leave any in the car.
But many people do.
I’ve never liked the idea of leaving a firearm in a vehicle, even if it’s locked up. Who knows who could get inside, and they could have plenty of time to dig around and get access to a ‘secured’ firearm.
In the end, nothing was taken that would make me sleep less well in the coming nights because if someone had stolen a firearm, I’d be worried about what they’d do with it. That’s not cool.
The final result is a few additional security cameras and a few trips around the neighborhood at night to check up on things. Chances are that its a few kids who are bored with life and want to play thug, and I can only hope that they change their ways.
Evlin is worried that they could become more brazen and take a chance at entering the house. If the happens, kids or not, it’ll be a bad decision on their part.
Do you leave any firearms, knives, etc inside your car when you aren’t there?
