If I could find the slimeball, pond scum lowlifes....

We had gone out to eat yesterday evening and make a trip to the grocery store and got home a little after 8. There was a message on the answering machine, pushed the button and listened to my oldest daughter,Lisa, crying and telling me that their house had been broken into during the day but they were okay.

She and my grandsons got home to find the back door kicked in, only the bottom half was split open but the doorknob had not been unlocked or opened since that would have set off the alarm.
The creeps had first kicked in a panel of the garage door, found that the alarm was on, they couldn't go thru the door to the back yard so they went thru the gate that Kenny had forgotten to lock after mowing the night before. Kicked in the bottom half of the back door and crawled into the house thru the split in the backdoor and proceed thru to take Kenny's Xbox and the two game systems the boys had received as gifts a couple of years ago and all the games and controllers. They took Lisa's laptop, two DVD players and almost all of Austin's GameBoy DS games, most of which he had bought for himself by saving his birthday/Christmas and allowance money . They didn't see the DS sitting on a side table in the livingroom.
They took Lisa's jewelry box, mostly costume jewelry but it did hold the emerald necklace and earings Kenny gave her when they married and my Mom's high school senior ring that Lisa usually wore and a Mom/Daughter ring that I had given her a few years ago.

If Kenny had not set the alarm yesterday morning when we left for work their loss would have been greater. Probably TVs and the main PC in their room. But as it was they could only take what they could get thru the split in the door.

Amanda and Randy gathered up some of their things, Amanda has almost every game system available and some games the boys like to play and headed up there.
Randy helped Kenny replace the door, this time with a really pretty metal core one and I sat with Lisa while she told me the events of the evening.
The police had been really good, she and the boys sat in the van out front since she didn't know if the creeps were still inside, while the police searched the house and called the security company. They walked thru the house with her making a list of missing items. She and the boys were in the play room first, found some things gone then the boys remembered the front room where all the systems were and took off. She said the scream that came from them when they saw the empty cabinet just ripped her heart out. Austin is 11 and Nicky is 7 and the reality of the cruelty of some people just smacked them in the face.

After the police left, they were waiting on Kenny to get home, she had the boys think of some of the good things about this. The boys decided the best thing was that the theives had not harmed their dogs or stolen food from the refrigerator.

 

How very sad, frustrating and maddening Toni. I know how attached kids get to their game systems so these thieves not only stole material items but also a part of the kid's innocence. Are break-ins common around their neighbourhood?

 

What a distressing thing for the whole family Toni - especially the children. :-x I hope their insurance will cover the losses and the the boys can get replacement games and consoles soon. I know the emeralds can't be replaced but maybe, just maybe, the police will find where the thieves sold them and retrieve them for Lisa. I have to agree with Richard, nowadays, a lot of burglaries are drug related sadly.