SAN ANTONIO, Texas – Boerne police have arrested five people in connection with a series of overnight car burglaries in three different subdivisions within their city.
As of early Monday morning, they had received more than a dozen reports of car break-ins in Boerne Heights, Kendall Creek Estates and the Woods of Frederick Creek, as well as one home burglary.
Clyde Saunders, who lives in the Woods of Frederick Creek, said he called 911 after getting an alert from his security camera around 3:30 a.m.
“I looked on the camera and saw somebody trying to get in the vehicle, but it was locked,” he said.
Within minutes of his call, several police officers arrived on the scene, even before the suspected burglars had a chance to leave.
“Multiple suspects that were in what turned out to be a stolen vehicle ended up hitting our police vehicle,” said Chief Steve Perez with Boerne P. D.
The officer who was inside the car which the suspects rammed suffered some minor cuts, Perez said.
The suspects, meanwhile, got out of the car and tried to run away.
Other officers caught three of the five immediately.
They tracked down the two others, a few hours later.
Perez said the arrested included two teenagers and three adults.
He said although all of them are young, he suspects they may have committed previous car burglaries, possibly in other cities.
Police also recovered quite a bit of stolen property from the suspects’ car.
“So far it looks like tools. We’ve got several firearms that were in the stolen vehicle,” Perez said.
In most of the cases, Perez said, the car owners had left their doors unlocked.
Saunders, who has seen other waves of car burglaries in the past, already had learned that lesson.
“They just walk up, get into the car and grab what they can grab that’s valuable to them and take off,” Saunders said. “I always lock my doors.”
As of late Monday morning, Boerne police had not yet released the names of the adult suspects who they arrested.