EXCLUSIVE: Brazen Vandals Bash Mailboxes In Quiet Rockland County Neighborhood
CHESTNUT RIDGE, N.Y. (CBSNewYork) -- Police say a group of vandals have targeted a quiet neighborhood in Rockland County by destroying homeowners' mailboxes.
One of the rampages was caught on nearby surveillance video. The footage shows the man throwing mail onto a front door step from a broken mailbox snapped from its pole.
The then hoists it onto his shoulder and runs off. Arya Rabinovits woke up that Saturday morning to find his mailbox missing.
"He's like, showing us I come to your door and do whatever I want," he told CBS2's Reena Roy. "It's very scary to live in a quiet place somebody should come at night, a group of people and break down your mailbox."
Rabinovits checked his cameras and tracked the vandal's movements. It all began just after 1 am with a group lurking and plotting in the darkness. Then, police say they left a few minutes later with Arya's property in tow.
Two hours later, they returned to toss what was inside across his lawn.
"I watched it together with my wife," Rabinovits said. "She was pretty shaken up."
He says this isn't the first time this has happened; his mailbox was also destroyed last year. This time around, police in Ramapo found it on the street down the block but the thieves were nowhere to be found.
Investigators believe the same group of vandals also damaged two other mailboxes next door.
"This needs to stop," Rabinovits said. "I hope police find this guy and he pays what he needs to pay."
He adds it will cost hundreds of dollars to fix, but of course his biggest concern is making sure it doesn't happen to him a third time.