You may have read about the “Acrobatic Thieves”, who were able to successfully make off with over $26,000 worth of merchandise from a New Jersey Best Buy store. Apparently their successful entry through the roof of a commercial building is catching on. A single thief attempted to plan his own spectacular roof entry, in order to burglarize a business.
This daring thief decided that an Oklahoma drugstore would be the target for his brilliant robbery plan. He somehow made it on to the roof of the drugstore, then made a grand entrance by breaking through the ceiling. However, his epic entrance ends up setting off the burglar alarm.
Thankfully for this thief, he had a backup plan. In order to avoid getting caught, all he had to do was exit the drugstore the same way that he came, right? He decides to go back through the ceiling (not clear why he didn’t try to use the door) by using a ladder. The footage from the security tape follows:
As you can see, this isn’t exactly the most smoothly executed burglary escape. The thief falls off his ladder an astounding seven times before he’s able to get away, and some of the falls actually look quite painful.
This story was covered by a few news networks. In this particular clip, the news anchors even have trouble reporting the story, breaking out into giggles as they watch the footage of the burglar falling off of the ladder:
Coverage by another (more serious) news anchor:
As far as we can tell from recent news reports, this thief is amazingly still at large, and police do not have any potential suspects in this attempted burglary.
We all love to read stories about stupid criminals, botched burglaries and dumb carjackers. However, with each one of these funny stories, it’s important to take a step back. Take some time to reflect on what you can learn from this burglar’s experience. Entering through the roof has recently become a trend for many burglars who target businesses, and this trend may begin to make its way to home burglaries as well. Does your skylight have a nearby glass break detector? Are your second-story windows protected by sensors? Is your monitored security system equipped to cover all of the entry points of your home?
While it may seem impossible to plan for every worst-case-burglary scenario, it’s still extremely important to use your common sense. Never fail to address a potential security vulnerability in your home because you think a burglar won’t find it. Though there are a lot of dumb criminals, there are also many highly intelligent burglars that have the skills to bypass most conventional security methods. These burglars often make a career out of their chosen profession, which takes advantage of people who don’t take the time to protect their home’s security. Spend a significant portion of time evaluating all potential security vulnerabilities in your home, and take the appropriate measures to protect them.
