Victims across Texas connect in search of thieves posing as tree trimmers
TEXAS — The stories are strikingly similar.
A man at the door says he's a worker trimming the neighbor's trees. The week before it happened to the Barr family in North Dallas, it happened to Keli Rabon in Houston.
"He said, 'Look. We use a drone to help us determine the precise measurements… so if we could just stand here and look up," Rabon recalls.
Some minutes later, while still waiting with the man for a drone to appear, Rabon heard her front door slam.
"And, he just looks up. His eyes get big and he said, 'Gotta go', and he ran out the house," she says.
Rabon checked her doorbell camera.
"I see a guy walking out like with almost a Santa sack of my gray and black blanket that I keep on my bed with something bulky inside it," Rabon said, "My heart dropped immediately."
Her cabinets and closet had been ransacked. Her safe was gone.
"It looked like my countertop of my closet had just been swiped across."
A former investigative reporter, she immediately began posting on social media.
"Within 24 hours of me posting, I actually started learning of other victims and other almost victims," she said.
In a video captured by a victim in College Station, you can actually see one man distracting a woman as a second man with gloves walks up. Glancing back, he slips through an unlocked back door, just like in the burglaries in Houston and Dallas.
Rabon and others are now sharing what happened to them, hoping to help catch those responsible.
"I'm like a dog with a bone," said Rabon, "I don't give up."