Stop! Thief!

Last week a friend of mine, who lives on the extreme left side of Huntsville, Alabama, alongside Redstone Arsenal, left to go to Florida for the weekend. She posted about it on her Facebook page and then headed out. While she was gone her parents went by her house every day to feed her dog and make sure he had water.

When she came home on a Sunday night, she found that her 2 laptop computers, both brand new, were missing. She searched around inside her house and determined that she had been robbed.

Her doors didn't show any sign of having been damaged. No windows were broken. But someone had definitely come into the house and stolen her computers. It appears that they went out through her garage, closing the door behind them as they went.

She reported it to the police and then began trying to figure out who might have done it.

Monday afternoon, around 2 pm when she came home from work, she saw a big white van in her neighborhood. After she went inside her house and put her stuff down, one of the guys came to her door. She said he knocked 'oddly' 3 times, not like a normal knock somehow. Something about the way he knocked made her uncomfortable.

She went to the door, but did not open it. She has windows on either side of the door that she can see out, but you can't see in. She stood and looked at the man standing there. He was wearing a powder blue shirt and tie. He was young and holding nothing in his hands. While she looked at him, her dog came running up behind her, jumped against the door and let out a deep bark. The man at the door turned and RAN back to the white van.

This, too, seemed odd, since the dog was safely inside the house.

She watched the men with the van for awhile. There were 3 guys walking chaotically from house to house, knocking 3 times on this door and that door, in no particular order. She thought it was odd, not at all like salesmen, but more like they were checking which houses were empty.

She called a guy friend, who came straight over (he has a massive crush on her and would die for her if she asked him to.) She got into his car and together they followed the van.

The van would drop off 2 of the guys and then drive out of the neighborhood and down the road to a gas station, where he would sit for about 5-10 minutes before driving back to the neighborhood and rendezvousing with the other 2 guys again. Eventually, the van picked up the other 2 guys and headed out of the neighborhood.

My friend and her loyal companion followed them.

At some point the guys in the van realized that they were being followed.

They gunned it and ran.

She took photos of them and their tag number and offered it to the police who are working the case of her house being robbed.

AZ72887

Meanwhile, she talked to some of her neighbors. Most of them were not home during the hours that these guys were working the neighborhood and had no idea this was going on. But one of them had been home and met with the guys. She said they were odd, claiming to be selling vacuums and yet overly interested in the things she kept inside her house, commenting on how nice they were and such.

Another neighbor who had been home when the 3 guys came around said she heard the same 3 knocks on her door, but did not answer. And then she heard someone very loudly trying to get in through the door. She said it was so loud that she thought he had succeeded in getting the door open.

So anyway, if you live anywhere near the neighborhoods bordering Redstone Arsenal and Madison on the west side of Huntsville, Alabama, keep your eyes open for 3 strange guys in a white van. The tag number is AZ72887