Crime: Burglary
The Victim: Brianne Byres
Date: Sunday, July 22
Time: Between 12:45 p.m. and 5:45 p.m.
Place: 5500 block of Belmont
APPARENTLY THE THIEF WAS HUNGRY.
Or perhaps a wine connoisseur.
Whoever robbed Brianne Byres on a recent Sunday afternoon stole not only deli meat from her fridge and a $40 bottle of wine from her wine cabinet, but also her sons’ Xbox, a Gucci watch, a digital camera and $1.50 in change. Maybe the thief was going to pick up a fresh baguette on the way home?
Byres and her 7- and 10-year-old sons were out for the day. They went to church that morning and then spent the afternoon at Hawaiian Falls Water Park. When they arrived home around 5:45 p.m., Byres noticed that her front door was unlocked.
“I immediately noticed that something was out of place. Most of the time I keep my house fairly in order and clean,” she says.
But this time she saw one of her son’s toys lying on the floor and asked the boys if they had taken it with them to the park that day.
“The boys said they hadn’t taken it, so I said, ‘OK, everybody back out of the house,’ because I knew something was wrong,” she says.
When the boys were safely outside in the front yard, Byres walked around the house to see if a window had been broken.
“It’s easy to break windows in these old houses,” she says, but Sr. Cpl. Ron Carpenter agrees but says that’s usually not how it’s done.
“Burglars don’t usually break windows because that takes time and makes noise,” he says. “If they have to break a window, they’ll move on to where they can easily get in, or they’ll move on to the next house.”
This wasn’t Byres first brush with burglary. Her home was broken into three years ago. Fortunately, police were parked nearby.
“That was much more dramatic. I walked into my house after picking up my kids from school, and I saw someone in my house stealing my stuff. Of course, I screamed and ran out of the house, while he ran the other way,” she says.
While Byres stood in her front yard, someone walked up to her and offered to help.
“They said they were with the DEA, but of course I was freaked out at this point so I asked to see some identification,” she says.
The man showed her his badge and told her that a major drug bust was taking place just a couple of houses down. Undercover police officers were parked in the side street adjacent to Byres’ home, and they had seen the man break into her house. As soon as they saw the thief run outside and into the alley, they caught him.
“I don’t know if he ever went to jail, but I got all my stuff back,” Byres says, adding that after this latest incident, she plans to install a security system.
Carpenter says he always recommends putting in a monitored alarm, or at the very least having a trusty guard dog or other noisemaking devices.
“If you can do something to yourself, your home, or your car to prevent crime,” he says, “you’re much better off.”
