Video Alert Leads UES Man To See Burglars In His Apartment In Real Time
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- Imagine getting an alert and then watching burglars steal from your home.
As CBS2's Tracee Carrasco reported, that is exactly what happened to an Upper East Side man, who saw the crime and then called police.
Two bold burglars were caught on a home security camera breaking into Danny Wheeler's apartment. As seen in the surveillance video, one suspect got in first, and looked around, and he then let his accomplice in through another window.
Wheeler watched all of it in real time after getting a motion sensor alert on his smart phone.
"So I looked down at the phone and saw that, you know, there was some sort of activity, clicked on the activity, and saw there was a guy. It was like a snapshot of a picture of a guy in my apartment," Wheeler said. "Like, within, like, you know, five seconds it's like, I'm being robbed."
Wheeler immediately called 911.
"I said: 'I have video. I'm watching somebody in my apartment right now,' and I was able to give them information immediately on the phone -- what they were wearing, what color shirt – everything," he said.
Wheeler thinks the men snuck in through a neighboring construction site, then jumped up on a roof next to their window and pried it open.
But lucky for Wheeler, Seamus McDaid -- an observant employee at the comedy club next door -- saw the burglars and tried to stop them.
"I went up the fire escape there, and when I went up, that's when I saw the guy going through the window, and I shouted, 'Hey, what are you doing?'" said Seamus McDaid, an employee of Comic Strip Live.
The burglars were spooked, with visible shock in their faces. The surveillance video even captured one of them saying, "We've been spotted." as they quickly grab their bags and looked for a way out.
"This isn't some kids," Wheeler said. "These are grown men going around and doing this, and they need to be found."
The burglars were in the apartment for less than two minutes thanks to the alert employee, but they did make off with a few hundred dollars of personal items. Police told CBS2 they were searching for the suspects.