ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) – Make sure you keep your garage doors closed. It appears a thief seen stealing a wallet out of a woman’s car and is hitting open garages all over town. One of the victims says police had a chance to arrest the thief two weeks ago when he hit their car.
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“If cops would have pursued him when my husband had caught him, it wouldn’t have happened again,” one of the victims, who wants to remain anonymous, said.
Ring doorbell video shows when the serial thief pulled up to her Albuquerque home near Osuna and Vista Del Norte, jumps out of his car and carefully creeps through the driveway. The victim says he rummaged through her car, taking off with a bag of makeup, her work badge, and medical documents.
She says her husband caught up to the man and followed him to a nearby gas station where he called the police. “They told him to back off and not to pursue him,” she said. “They said they couldn’t do anything.”
APD says her husband called dispatch and told them he was going to confront the thief with a gun. APD says dispatch advised against that but said they’d send out officers. They told KRQE once officers got to the scene the suspect was gone.
On Tuesday, she and her husband saw KRQE News 13’s story. The same man her husband had followed was captured on video breaking into someone else’s car near Coal and Girard and stealing another victim’s purse, before returning to put her keys back in the car moments later. The crook then tried using the cards to buy gas but the victims had already canceled them.
They’re not the only ones. Another victim sent a video of the same man, stealing her wallet from her car, parked inside her garage near West Mesa High School on October 13. He used her cards to buy gas and snacks.
The woman says the thief didn’t take anything of value from her car. He later returned her work badge and the medical documents he’d taken, to her work. She has since gotten it back.
KRQE News 13 reached out to the Albuquerque Police Department to get the status of the cases, they say they’re still investigating.