SAN ANTONIO — After losing a day of work and having to pay a tire repair bill of $360, Michele Villarreal said she's had enough of "punks" with no regard for the property of others.
The Lakeside resident has blanketed her neighborhood with flyers offering a reward of $1,000 for anyone who provides information leading to the arrest of the tire slasher who attacked her truck last week.
Villarreal said her security cameras chirped at 1:48 a.m. last Sunday morning, alerting her that a man was in her driveway with a sharp object.
Villarreal said the man, who she believes to be a teen, can be seen jumping out of a dark-colored sedan while the driver remains in the car watching.
Two quick stabs, Villarreal said, was enough to ruin the tire. And she said she is not alone. With help from relatives, she said they surveyed the surrounding blocks and found three more people who suffered the same fate at the same time.
Eight days later, a truck parked a few houses down on Lake Bank Drive sits idle, one tire still flattened. Villarreal said the elderly residents haven't been able to fix the damage yet.
Villarreal calls the incident exceptionally aggravating and said her message to the vandals would be: "Stay away from this house, that's for sure!" adding she will do whatever is necessary to protect her family and home.
Villarreal said she and her neighbors are fed up from the damage and break-ins.
"We sure are. We're done. Fed up with them. And they need to stay out of Lakeside. They need to stop doing these things. It's costing people a lot of money. It really is," she said.
Villarreal said she has been patrolling the neighborhood watching for the dark-colored sedan and she has been on guard, watching her many surveillance cameras.
"I'm not resting. I'm sitting here watching my cameras all night," Hernandez said. "Everyone is well aware of what's going on."
One block over, her neighbor Cassandra Pearson agrees. Pearson said she has been hypervigilant since she woke up to car burglars hitting her street recently.
"We've had a rash of burglary of vehicles in our neighborhood. I heard my chimes continue to go off and I looked through my camera and I see a red vehicle with three individuals," Pearson said.
Pearson said when two of the men started pulling on the handles of vehicle doors, she took action.
"I hollered for them to get away from his truck and they took off," Pearson said.
Pearson claims police were reluctant to respond.
"I had to demand for them to send a patrolman because they weren't going to, but when you look at the app you could see they had been doing this throughout the night," Pearson said.
Pearson said even though she had good, clear video of what happened when the would-be thieves were in her driveway rifling through her car, nothing came of the incident.
Pearson said she asked SAPD, "Why aren't you saturating the area and patrolling the area more?"
The woman, who said she worked as a civilian in a law enforcement agency, said things will get worse unless effective action is taken.
"You have to be pro-active. You can't wait for something bad to happen," Pearson said. "I'm not saying I'm a vigilante or nothing like that, I'm just being realistic and being real."
With regard to the latest incident, San Antonio Police said some of the people who had damage have so far failed to follow through with filing police reports.
A spokesman said without complaints, they cannot pursue these cases. They encourage anyone who is a victim of a property crime to reach out to their non-emergency number, which is 210-207-7484.
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