Criminal Behavior

We got back from our wonderful trip to South Africa about a week ago and are trying to readjust to life in Galway. I'm going to blog about the trip and post lots of pictures, but thought I would write quickly about something that happened while we were gone. A couple of days before Christmas we got an e-mail from our property manager asking us to call regarding an urgent matter. It turns out that someone had broken into our apartment in our absence, tried to steal my laptop (God forbid!), but was not totally successful. We didn't get too many details at that point, but just tried not to worry too much since we couldn't really do anything about it until we got home.

We arrived home late last Thursday night to find that one of the glass panes in our front door was shattered. The locks had been changed, but we still didn't really know what happened. We were given the name and contact info for one of the local police officers and it took us a few days to make contact. Once we did, we found that the laptop was unharmed and waiting for us. Apparently, the thief simply removed the glass from our front door window and crawled in. It was surprising to find out how easy that was to do. Luckily the shattered glass has been replaced, but it makes us wonder how many people know how to remove them? Anyway, this guy came in and scoped the place out. He was bright enough to put the laptop, with cord and adaptor, into the laptop case. Right about that time, one of our neighbors noticed that something seemed wrong at our apartment. He went around to the back of the apartments while his girlfriend waited in the front. They called the police, who said they were on their way. At that moment, the thief came through our side gate to the front where the girl was standing. She confronted him (you go girl!!), he dropped the laptop and ran!!!! The police arrived a minute or two later and they drove around the neighborhood to see if they could find him. The interesting thing is that from her description, the police think they know who it is! He's suspected in a number of other cases and they even know where he lives. It seems he's gone into hiding since this incident, but we're hopeful that they will eventually track him down.

Needless to say, we feel very lucky that nothing was really taken and he didn't get away with our laptop. And we are very thankful for our neighbors, who prevented what could have been a big loss.