Residents of northern Wake County neighborhood puzzled by weekend thefts from cars
WAKE COUNTY (WTVD) -- At least a half dozen cars were hit by a thief or thieves on Townsend Warbler Court near Wake Forest over the weekend, according to neighbors.
Although that was the number of people who reported being victims on a neighborhood website, the Wake County Sheriff's Office said only three were reported to them.
And investigators found that in all three of those cases the cars were unlocked.
"I didn't even know about it until the next morning," Mae Scott told ABC11.
Scott said that's when she noticed that she apparently left her passenger door unlocked.
But all she could find missing was a cassette adapter for her MP3 player.
"That was all that was taken," Scott said. She added, "They didn't take the expensive electronics, the GPS, which is weird."
A few doors down, another neighbor said her locked cars were not broken into. But she fears what the thief or thieves might do next.
"You know, how brave can they get? They get by with something simple, how bold do they get? If you have a garage open they could have opened our garage and gone in the house and taken everything we had," Cindy Edwards said.
Edwards, like many neighbors, was surprised by how little was taken from the cars.
Scott said she didn't report the theft from her car because of the missing item was not valuable.
She said one of the most valuable things taken during the crime spree was a bicycle but it was found nearby.
"Next door was a bottle of cologne. Mine was the cassette. And the bike. It was like ride a bike for short distance and then just abandon it," Scott said. "It was almost like it was a scavenger hunt."
Many in the neighborhood don't expect the culprits to be caught.
But they say they've learned a lesson they will pass on to others. Thieves check car doors and usually steal only from the ones that are unlocked.
