SAN ANTONIO — New video recorded during last week's winter storm captures two men hauling away an air conditioner unit in broad daylight.
The homeowner says he did what he was told and stayed home during the winter weather. He was inside as his unit was taken, and he didn't hear a thing.
His neighbor, whose camera captured the incident, shared the video on Nextdoor. As of Thursday evening, the post has more than 100 reactions and 200 comments from concerned neighbors. Some said they spotted the same vehicle near their home, while others said they even recognized the men in the video.
The incident happened in Greater Harmony Hills Neighborhood on the north side.
Around 11 a.m. last Wednesday, video shows a moving truck parked along the 300 block of Serenade Drive. Two men hop out and run to grab an A/C unit sitting outside of a home.
"When you walk anywhere around the side of my house it says, 'Attention, you're being recorded,'" said the homeowner, who asked that we withhold his name.
It appears the two people in the video didn't care they were on camera.
In about one minute, they cut the A/C line, put the unit on a dolly and roll it away into the truck.
The homeowner, who is retired, said he discovered the theft the following day. He said he bought the unit 15 years ago.
"The more I thought about it, the more I just completely befuddled by the fact that they knew they were being recorded," he said. "They know we'd be able to see that truck. How they'd be so stupid to do something like that is just beyond comprehension."
The man's neighbor, Lili, recalled workers being in and out of the victim's home the previous few days.
"I just thought maybe they were workers or something," she said. "They were so confident in the way they did this. It was just unbelievable."
"More than likely, that's what they're stealing it for is aluminum in the copper inside, it was an easy catch," said Patty Gibbons, President of the Greater Harmony Hills Neighborhood Association. "If the house looks like it's vacant, then they're going to go for it and off they go."
Gibbons says there tends to be more criminal activity on this side of the neighborhood because there is easier access to San Pedro.
"We're a very porous neighborhood, so you can get in and out very quickly to San Pedro, to Blanco," said Gibbons. "[Police] know that whatever is happening here, it's going to move to another neighborhood."
Gibbons says neighbors relay any crime to police and SAFFE officers are consistently on patrol.
She doesn't consider the area unsafe, but more so on the vulnerable side.
Gibbons says the focus now is working on how to better deter crime during the day.
"We've got to learn about it, and then we adapt to it and then we don't become victims of it. We become the victors over it," she said.
Neighbors in Greater Harmony Hills have been successful in the past in helping police catch criminals in the act.
"Many times we've had people come and just watch the houses actually go into the backyards and break in the houses. So this happens quite often in Harmony Hills," Gibbons explained. "[A man] was casing this house. He had an individual on a truck, individual on foot. They went to the backyard and that woman was prepared. When they they try to open the door, she was prepared and [police] caught him. They caught all three of them."
Some neighbors told KENS 5 they plan to install a fence or cage around their A/C unit, and even install a tracker just to be safe.
The homeowner whose unit was stolen said he filed a police report.
"It was either a theft or it was a repo that was done wrong," he believes. "My home insurance will pay for [my new unit], but I have to pay for the deductible, so it's gonna cost me $2,500."
We did reach out to the moving company where the truck appears to be from to see if they have trackers on their fleet. We are waiting to hear back.