Hey man, those aren’t free.

Hello friends,

I’m getting a late start here at Mission Repair today; it was a long night. Here’s my story in a nutshell:

I was awoken last night at about 3:30am by my dog Shadow. He was whining and pacing (not typical for him in the middle of this night) so I let him outside, only to see a truck in the construction area behind my house (well, I could see it’s lights) driving in a place where no one should be driving.

I opened my garage and turned off the lights; I was able to get a good visual on these “lights in the field” and watched. The lights then turned off, and I could hear voices and “clunking”…it wasn’t quite right.

I called 911, and explained that something was not jiving here. Yes it’s an active construction zone, but they NEVER start working before 7:00am (per the rules!) and I just had a strange feeling. While talking to the 911 operator, the truck started to move.

“Units are en route”. I backed into my garage, into the darkness, as then this truck started to pull out of the mud pile, and then begin to drive directly toward me. I was told to try to record the license plate number (if I could), and started to whisper as the truck came through the field and stopped directly in front of my house. I was still on the phone…standing in my open garage, talking to the 911 operator and watching the next move.

Then 2 men got out of the truck and stood in front of my garage then proceeded to finish “chaining” up the trailer onto their truck. The 911 operator asked me to shut the garage…but I figured that would tip them off for sure; at this point I didn’t know for certain they they KNEW I was standing there…maybe they would just chalk up the open garage to a lazy homeowner.

As this was happening, I saw police cars entering the neighborhood, and then in front of my house. As they pulled up…the two guys ran…back into the field.

I quickly slipped back into the house, locked the doors, and hung up with 911.

At the end of it all, my son Casey and I watched for a couple of hours as the manhunt began. And here are a couple of shots from my kitchen window:

You may have guessed it: They were there to steal that trailer. In a stolen truck, with stolen plates, and a bed full of stolen items.

Shadow saved the day 😉

Is there a moral of the story? Not really- other than I feel pretty good being part of this operation and several people got their stolen items back.

The unfortunate part is that they didn’t catch these guys. So it looks like I’ll be on neighborhood watch again tonight!

Have a good evening, Ryan