One San Francisco neighbor who tried to record a car break-in he witnessed Saturday morning said he ended up with thieves throwing things at him.
Richmond District resident Mark Dietrich said he was turning onto 15th Avenue and Clement Street at around 7:00 a.m. Saturday when he heard a car alarm. Dietrich saw two masked people breaking into his neighbor's pickup truck.
"So I slowed down, and I whipped out my camera, and I started taking video," he recalled. "And I took a video of them pulling things and rummaging through this car, and they saw me, and I think – that actually, they knew I was videotaping, that stopped them, so they stopped what they were doing."
In the video Dietrich recorded, one of the masked individuals throws a drink at Dietrich. Then, the two masked individuals can be seen throwing small cartons at Dietrich's vehicle, and then they sped away in a black car.
The cartons thrown at Dietrich appeared to be filled with a Brazilian heavy cream, which wound up splattered all over Dietrich's car.
The neighbor who owns the pickup truck declined to speak on camera for this story but told NBC Bay Area that around $500 worth of work tools were stolen from his truck. They added they were grateful to Dietrich for deterring the thieves before they could take even more.
Dietrich went with this neighbor to file a police report.
Local
A few blocks away, Dietrich spotted a white van that had also been broken into. Inside, a lone box of the same Brazillian cream cartons was left.
A woman confirmed to NBC Bay Area that the van broken into Saturday belonged to her.
Get a weekly recap of the latest San Francisco Bay Area housing news. Sign up for NBC Bay Area’s Housing Deconstructed newsletter.
Dietrich said this woman told him the thieves stole some cream cartons from her van.
Other Richmond District neighbors told NBC Bay Area that they'd also been rattled to hear about recent crime at businesses in the neighborhood. On Tuesday, thieves allegedly rammed a car into a convenience store on Balboa Street to steal lottery tickets. Over the summer, owners at a cigarette store at 17th Avenue and Geary say thieves also rammed a vehicle into their store.
Dietrich said that many of his neighbors feel discouraged about filing police reports for crimes like this. But he and other neighbors have been encouraging anyone who witnesses a crime to go forward with reporting it to the police.
" Resources go where the crimes happen, and if we stop reporting the crimes, the police will look to them on paper as if they aren't happening," he noted.
In the case of the break-ins on Saturday, Dietrich is hopeful the Brazilian heavy cream detail might help police track down details.
"It might be the clue that actually catches these criminals because these small groups of criminals are hitting over and over again," he emphasized.
