“He scaled an eight foot fence!” Preston Hollow resident Ann Rondeau can’t help but repeat over and over again in disbelief.
On Wednesday, March 30, around 1:30 in the afternoon, 82-year-old Rondeau went out to her front yard to pick up some leaves that had fallen out of their trash bags. She locked all of her doors except the garage door, which she exited from. She thought about setting her alarm, but figured she wouldn’t be outside for very long.
Meanwhile, Dallas police officers patrolling the area spotted a man they recognized as a convicted criminal (now out on parole) in Rondeau’s alley. He is described as a 50-year-old black male, about 205 lbs, 5’9” and bald. The officers also noticed his car parked in the Albertson’s lot around the corner from Rondeau’s home.
They had a pretty good idea of what he was up to – he’d been arrested and jailed for snatching purses and wallets in the same area within the last year. So the officers went down Rondeau’s block where they saw her out in her yard. They immediately stopped and asked her to check her home.
She did, and she’d been robbed.
Police believe that the suspect saw Rondeau outside and took the opportunity to scale her wooden fence to gain access to the back yard. They suspect he then entered through the door in the garage, picked up a pair of Rondeau’s gardening gloves (later found discarded in the alley), locked the garage door behind him, turned off the TV and ransacked the house, leaving only with Rondeau’s wallet containing about $70 cash and a couple of credit cards.
Even though the police spotted the suspect, by the time they saw that Rondeau had in fact been burglarized, it was too late. He was gone, and they can’t arrest him unless he’s caught in the act.
“We did see him out in the area, but we can’t put him in [Rondeau’s] house,” says Detective Lowell Johnson of the North Central division. “We have had some offenses in the area that are similar. And this follows the pattern of what the suspect has done in the past. He will walk up in an alley and look for people in their yard, out mowing the grass. And then he goes in and takes what he can.”
According to Johnson, the suspect’s parole officer is aware that he might have been involved in this incident, but there is no evidence at this point to link him to the crime – none of the credit cards have been used, or found for that matter.
What makes the story even more disconcerting for Rondeau is that a couple of weeks ago she asked her neighbor to watch her house while she was away. The neighbor reported that he heard his dog barking one night and went out into the alley where he found a man of the same description peering through Rondeau’s fence. He confronted the man and asked him if he was looking for something. The man just turned and left.
This marks the third time Rondeau’s home has been broken into. She says it might be time for her to move out of the neighborhood. “I love my house, but this is pretty wild.”
