It should be the season of giving but it’s the season for package thieves too. In one of the most brazen cases in recent memory, police said a thief came running onto the doorstep of a home on Long Island to swipe a package in the middle of a delivery. And it was all caught on camera. NBC New York’s Greg Cergol reports.
To say this was a brazen theft would be an understatement.
As a delivery worker was leaving a box on the front steps of a Long Island home, a thief came running up from the sidewalk and swiped the package before running off in the middle of the day, with the UPS worker and family chasing after him.
"It's just unbelievable. I didn’t think that would ever happen," said Erica Bernhard, who stood on the front porch of her Massapequa Park home on Monday — the same spot where the daring act went down.
"You do it when no one’s around or I thought he’d be watching that no one’s home. I just never imagined something like this," said Bernhard.
Her father and the UPS delivery worker were just feet away from the box when the thief struck. Efforts to chase him down failed, and the suspect took off in a white sedan.
And while it seems like a shocking random act done in the moment, may have started earlier in November. Bernhard said someone hacked her department store credit account nd started ordering expensive items. Each time a package was delivered, Bernhard said the thief would have it removed from her porch.
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"He said 'Yeah, I have a package from Bloomingdale’s. Someone is picking it up...So I look at it and see all my information. My name, address," said Bernhard.
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The package see on video getting swiped was the last scheduled delivery. Bernhard said she expected it would be taken, but had hoped surveillance would identify the thief.
Things went from bad to worse after the suspect started running away. As the father went to chase him, he tripped on a Halloween lawn decoration, landing him face first in the grass.
"It was very comical. My poor dad just had a knee replacement. He shouldn’t be running anywhere," Bernhard said.
An investigation is ongoing.
