One woman got home from work to find out burglars had turned her shed into an illicit storage facility.
“They cut my lock off my shed. I noticed there was a different lock on my shed. It was huge,” said Denequa Jackson.
She called her dad and asked if he suddenly decided to store something in her shed. He told her no.
“I thought I was being pranked. I was looking around, like is someone playing a joke on me?” said Jackson.
She asked her neighbor if he saw anyone in her yard. He said no, but someone had stolen his yard tools. Together they cut the lock on the shed.
“It was just piled up,” said Jackson.
Inside they found a crime spree stash. There were power tools, lawn mowers, air compressors, and snowblowers. They started talking to neighbors and found they had all been stolen from homes nearby.
Dion Williams, The United Neighborhood Block Club Association President, says he has heard from neighbors about a dozen similar burglaries in the last three weeks in the area of Puritan and The Southfield. Detroit Police say the Breaking and Entering Task Force is investigating such crimes.
Eugene Nelson says he believes he saw one of the thieves stealing such items. A day after someone stole his weedwacker he saw a suspicious man moving power tools through a random yard down the street. He took a picture, then confronted him.
“I spoke to the guy and said bring my weedwacker back. He said, I am not a thief,” said Nelson.
The suspicious man then took off.
Neighbors say they are speaking out abut what happened, because by raising awareness, they can increase the odds the thieves are caught.
“They go from one neighborhood to the next, but once we start talking with each other, the word gets out,” said Joseph Hutchens, a neighbor whose stolen items were found in the locked shed.
Denequa said the night after they found the stash of stolen items in her shed, she closed her shed up. In the morning it was wide open.
“They tried to come back for the stuff, but it wasn’t there” said Jackson.
