Neighbors in southeast San Antonio rally after a fire-damaged home is looted, capturing thefts on surveillance as homeowners grieve their lost pets.
SAN ANTONIO — First there was a fire and then the thievery began.
Scavenging activity was caught on surveillance cameras when neighbors stood up for each other in southeast San Antonio.
One month ago, a retired disabled veteran and his wife lost three cats and a dog when their long-time home caught fire.
The neatly maintained 57-year-old home received extensive interior damage while the couple was out for a movie night.
Seeing their house in shambles and coping with the loss of their three cats and a dog was hard but everyone on the block said what happened next was even harder to fathom.
Cameras caught the arrival of the first two thieves at 6:38 a.m., just a few days after the fire.
The homeowner said the garage door had been left unlocked to give a contractor access to the home and a man and a woman wasted no time trying to get in.
While the man can be seen entering the yard through a side gate, a woman can be seen opening the garage door to gain easy access.
Jaye, a neighbor whose camera captured it all, reviewed the video and pointed out the male suspect calmly walking away with a toaster oven.
To make his job easier, next he can be seen backing a vehicle up into the driveway to load up more stolen property.
“What kind of human being takes from another human being who has already lost everything? Because everything in the garage was stuff that was salvaged from the fire. Those are the few things she had,” said Jaye.
While efforts had been made to secure the home from vandals, Jaye said these thieves had no heart.
“You can tell the house burned down. It’s obvious. There’s boards all over the place,” Jaye said, adding that when more scavengers showed up in a truck, she ran out with her cell phone to confront them.
Jaye said when she posted video of the incident on social media, many made comments asking if she had a gun.
“I had a lot of comments that said, ‘I hope you were carrying,'” Jaye said. “Their house burned and they lost several pets so I’m like really? You’re going to do this? You’re that type of evilness to go and take something from somebody who has lost everything?”
Jaye said two men loaded up scrap metal the owner had intended to sell to recover some of the costs of the fire damage.
Not only were they stealing but Jaye said they were disrespectful.
“These people were not only taking stuff out of the dumpster. They were just throwing what they didn’t want out into the driveway and then taking what they wanted so they were picking and choosing and leaving a mess,” she said.
Jaye said adding insult to injury, two police officers who came to take a report failed to do so.
“We are taught as San Antonians: ‘See something, say something.’ We see something. We say something,” she said.
Jaye said she was upset when the officer told her they were not going to write an incident report because the homeowner didn’t have a fence or a sign. Jaye said police told her the items were trash and the thieves did nothing wrong.
KENS 5 asked for any calls made to the home in the days after the fire. We asked what the law says about taking things from a trash container.
We have not received a response but when we do, we will share what we learn.
In the meantime, the homeowner has now posted numerous signs all around the property warning trespassers to stay away and neighbors have added additional security cameras on the block.
They promise they are all being extra vigilant while repair work continues.