“I’m not a smoker, but my entire car smelled like smoke,” he remembered. “Then, I noticed the change I keep in there was gone. And to top it all off, my Apple Watch was gone.”
He quickly filed a police report detailing the items he’d lost in an apparent overnight car break-in, and checked the footage from the surveillance camera he had trained on the front of his house. Sure enough, the footage showed two men breaking into his car overnight and rummaging through it, pocketing the items as they went.
With the permission of deputies on his case, Thomas turned to Nextdoor and uploaded the footage to share with his neighbors. The response was immediate.
“There’s been almost a thousand views on that video,” Thomas notes. “A couple leads have come in, and some people say they recognize the men.”
Thanks to the footage and the leads obtained from neighbors, he is hopeful that deputies are closer to finding the duo who broke into his car. In the meantime, neighbors are keeping an eye out for any other suspicious activity in the neighborhood.
“Nextdoor really helps you to talk to your neighbors, even people you have never met before,” Thomas says. “It also helped me let all my neighbors know that morning: ‘Hey everybody, check your cars and be on the lookout.’”
Originally reported by ABC Tampa.
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