True Crime: Garage break-in

The Victim: Scott Mallonee
The Crime: Garage burglary
Date: Saturday, Nov. 20
Time: Between 12:00 a.m. and 6 a.m.
Location: 6000 block of Del Norte

They grabbed everything, but left the beer.

Scott Mallonee had been away on business for a few days. With stops in Indianapolis and Tucson, he was glad to be back home with family. That’s where Mallonee was on Nov. 20, and the family’s cars were parked in the detached garage behind his home.

“I went out Saturday morning, and saw someone had broken into the garage and went through both our cars,” Mallonee says. “They probably jumped the fence.”

The burglar had swiped a GPS, weed trimmer, lawnmower, a child’s toy car, power hedge clippers and gas blower. Also taken were all of his tools.

“It was 20 years of accumulating random tools,” he says of theft.

The burglars even went through the suitcases still in the car from Mallonee’s travels, and stole his and his wife’s sunglasses.

“It’s the fact that someone went through your suitcases that bothered me,” he says. “That’s a little weird.”

This was his family’s first experience with burglary, but Mallonee says he knows of five other home break-ins in the neighborhood.

After taking stock of the losses, Mallonee was surprised by one item left behind.

“They didn’t get the beer out of the garage refrigerator,” he says with a laugh.

Dallas Police Lt. Barry Payne of the North Central Patrol Division says the most common burglaries in this area are those of open or unlocked garages.

“In this particular case, the owner left the garage unlocked so that potential buyers could inspect the property,” he says. “When buildings such as this are left unsecured, expensive equipment and tools are certainly at risk. It would be only prudent to have some sort of Realtor’s lock box containing a key to allow these inspections rather than just leaving the building open.”