SAN ANTONIO — Kipp Shoekraft walked out to his truck last week to find his passenger window ripped out and let under the vehicle. The inside of his truck was a mess and his handgun was gone.
A simple dinner with this mother had just turned into a headache.
"I immediately told my mom, 'don't touch anything we need to call the police," Shoekraft said.
Shoekraft soon learned he wasn't the only victim. He said another truck in the parking lot had been hit earlier which had prompted a manager at the Texas Roadhouse location to ask who owned it. Shoekraft only found out they were asking due to a burglary after his own truck was broken into.
He eventually got surveillance video from Taco Palenque across the street. It shows what appears to be a red Land Rover back up next to his truck. Over the next 60 seconds, a person jumped out of the Land Rover, pried out his window, and rummaged though his truck. The Land Rover then sped away.
Shoekraft met with SAPD and provided the video to them the same night. When he left for home, he saw yet another group of police vehicles gathered at another nearby shopping area. Shoekraft then discovered another truck was broken into at Lin's International Buffet. The victim in that case had also tracked down surveillance video and it was familiar.
"The footage that the other people had at Lin's had the exact same red Land Rover in the surveillance footage as well. The exact same car," Shoekraft said.
The LexisNexis Community Crime Map showed a total of 10 vehicle burglaries off of 1604 between Bandera and Culebra on Nov. 28, all of which occurred between 7 p.m. and 9 p.m.
There was a total of 609 reported vehicle burglaries across San Antonio in just the last two weeks.
Shoekraft said police didn't assign a detective to the case until a week later. He said police had the video showing the red Land Rover that same night but the photo was never released to the public.
"There were six to eight other cars that were broken into in a two hour span all during that time. Had they acted when I gave them the original footage, maybe some of these guys wouldn't have gotten broken into and they would have caught the people doing it. Instead it's like 10 days later and they barely assigned someone to the case," Shoekraft said.
KENS 5 asked SAPD if they were looking for the red Land Rover in those videos. An SAPD spokesman was not able to comment on the videos at that time but did say the case had been assigned to a detective. Shoekraft said he had also provided the videos to the detective directly as well.