SEATTLE — A man was caught on camera creeping into a house overnight, making off with the homeowner’s 2014 GMC truck.
The theft happened eight days ago, just before 5:30 a.m. on Sunday, Feb. 12. And the crook is still on the loose.
This homeowner admits he and his wife accidentally left his door unlocked and left town. That made it easy for this man to walk in and take whatever he wanted. He kind of grimaced when he told us about that mistake.
“(He) walks in, and he’s just kind of creeping along like about like this,” said Jack Rosellini.
He described a burglar walking into his Capitol Hill home in the early morning hours two Sundays ago while he and his wife were away at their beach house.
“Then he left,” said Rosellini. “And then about, I don’t know, half hour later, he comes back in, and he walks all the way back over here. And he gets as far as this. And then he’s looking around and looking around and checking everything out, trying to see why isn’t anybody here? Anybody commenting? It’s like; it was like 4 o’clock in the morning.”
Then the man left again.
“Right, he leaves a second time,” Rosellini said. “Then he comes back at 5:20 a.m.”
That’s when the man walked farther into the house and swiped keys lying on a charging station.
“And then finally the driveway where he actually is getting in the car, starting it and driving,” Rosellini said.
Seattle Police crime data show he is hardly alone.
In 2021, the number of vehicle thefts in the Emerald City came in at more than 5,300. But thieves drove the number of vehicles stolen in 2022 to nearly 7,000, a 30% increase. And in the first month of this year alone, crooks took off in more than 600 vehicles that belonged to someone else.
“Oh, I was shocked,” Rosellini said. “It was just like, are you kidding me? There’s no way.”
The theft has deeply affected him.
“Twenty-three years we’ve been in this house,” reflected Rosellini. “And we’ve never had anything close.”
He says he wants this person caught. And he is upset, too, with Seattle police. He says it took them four long hours to show up after he called 911.
Seattle police have admitted their response times are long. They say they are down hundreds of police officers.
Rosellini, whose cousin, Albert, was the state’s Governor from 1957 to 1965, believes Seattle police officers’ salaries should be doubled. He says that is the only way to get the kind and number of officers the city needs to be safe.
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