A San Antonio neighborhood proved that nosy neighbors have their uses. When a masked stranger showed up on Bent Branch Street Thursday morning and started fiddling with a truck that clearly was not his, the folks nearby noticed right away. Turns out, when everybody on a block knows everybody else’s cars, a stranger trying to break into one sticks out like a clown at a funeral.
The truck in question was a maroon 2017 Ford F-250 King Ranch, and its owners were about as far away as you can get from the situation, out on a cruise celebrating their wedding anniversary. Their daughter, Maria Madicola, was staying at the house while they were gone. Her parents are both retired Air Force veterans, and according to Maria, her dad bought that truck to celebrate his retirement. He fell in love with it. Now it is gone.
Police told KENS 5 the suspects, a man and a woman, tried three separate times over about half an hour to get into the locked truck before finally succeeding and driving off. A neighbor walking his dog spotted the whole thing, recognized that nobody should have been anywhere near that truck, and had the good sense to start recording. Another neighbor’s security camera caught an even clearer view. Between the two, police now have license plate footage and video to work with, which is a lot more than they usually get in these cases…