SAN ANTONIO, Texas – San Antonio police are trying to track down a burglar who broke into dozens of mailboxes at a North Side apartment complex Friday morning, then escaped on a motorcycle.
An officer responding to a call about a theft in progress around 4:30 a.m. says he saw a man burglarizing a cluster mailbox at the Landera apartments, located in the 13400 block of Blanco Road.
The officer chased the man who took off running but was not able to catch him.
He says the burglar then jumped onto a motorcycle and sped away.
Officers spread out in the area, looking for the burglar but did not find him.
They say they did find a bag that he dropped in the parking lot which seemed to contain at least some of the stolen mail.
In all, they say he broke into 48 mailboxes in the cluster, including the smaller type that hold letters and the larger ones for packages.
Seeing police gather around her apartment complex’s mailbox is an all-too-familiar sight for Viola Register.
“We’re constantly getting notices that the mailbox has been broken in,” she said.
Register said the complex’s management had recently installed security lights and surveillance cameras in the hope of preventing this sort of problem.
She said her mailbox has been hit before, and it’s only by luck that it wasn’t burglarized again.
“When I put my key in, the whole section pops out. So that would be easy to get into too,” Register said.
Mailbox thefts continue to be a problem throughout the city, police said.
They were not able to determine whether the man who broke into these mailboxes may be responsible for other similar burglaries in the area.