Elise Daniel doesn’t feel unsafe after her home was burglarized.
She simply feels mad.
“Well, it really just makes me angry. I’m more of a get angry and not scared sort of person,” Daniel says of the recent break-in to her home in the Meadows.
The home was ransacked of more than $7,000 in property including jewelry, computer equipment, a Playstation 3, a camera, DVDs and CDs. Crooks scaled a fence in the backyard to initially get onto her property.
“The lock was on the fence, but it wasn’t closed. They climbed over the privacy fence and took the lock off the gate, and came in that way,” Daniel says.
The burglars then found an unlocked window, pulled off the screen, and entered the home looking for loot.
“I felt really sick to my stomach,” Daniel says of returning to her home and finding her house burglarized. “I’m just really angry.”
Dallas Police Lt. Barry Payne of the North Central Patrol Division says it is important that residents make their homes as difficult of a target as possible for criminals because break-ins take a very short amount of time. Alarms can make it easier for police to respond, he says.
“One wants to make their house harder to break in than all their neighbors’ houses,” Payne says. “In this particular case, it would have been helpful to lock the windows and turn on the alarm.
“This type of offense can generally be completed in five minutes or less. People say that the police can’t get there that quickly, but if the alarm goes off, people begin to look around and may see the suspect, so we have a chance to find them.”
