Someone smashed, grabbed and fled
The Victim: Matthew Pickett
The Crime: Burglary
Date: Friday, March 8
Time: Between noon and 5 p.m.
Location: 6400 block of Meadow
The price of gold has been on the rise in recent years. At the end of March, prices topped $1,400 per ounce. While gold is always a target for a crafty thief, the escalating prices can make for a more profitable take.
Matthew Pickett experienced this firsthand recently.
Pickett had come home from work on the afternoon of March 8. He made a nice lunch at home before heading back to work. He remembered nothing out of place — just a normal afternoon. After eating his meal, he drove back to work to finish up for the week.
If only he had stayed a bit longer, the crime might not have occurred. Making matters worse, his family’s house alarm had malfunctioned a bit lately, so his family had stopped using it.
Sometime in the few hours after he left and returned home at 5 p.m., someone broke through a back window.
“I just saw glass all over the floor,” Pickett says of the scene when he returned home from work.
Pickett says had the alarm been on, it would not have worked anyway because it had been malfunctioning on the rear windows.
“The alarm was kind of touchy. We’ve been having some issues with it,” Pickett says.
The burglars made off with some gold jewelry and one large flatscreen TV from an upstairs bedroom.
“The police thought that was odd. They bypassed other valuables in the house,” he says. “They must have known it was there. It’s almost as if they knew what was there.”
After the burglary, Pickett believes he found the TV at a pawnshop on Harry Hines Boulevard, but did not have the serial number to prove it. Police told Pickett that someone had been arrested in connection with the crime.
“But we didn’t get anything recovered,” he says. “We have added a whole new security system.”
Dallas Police Lt. Richard Dwyer of the North Central Patrol Division says the theft of gold jewelry has not increased in the area, but that gold is a common target.
“Jewerly, whether it is gold or gemstones, is a common item taken in residential burglaries,” Dwyer says. “That is more due to the fact it can be easily carried and hidden when leaving the scene. In addition, it can be sold to a pawn shop or someone in the street.”
A safe is something to consider if someone has a large amount of expensive jewelry.
“The owner should look for features such as being fireproof, the combination code can be changed by the owner, and bolted to the floor for added protection (such as the floor of a closet). Photographing the jewelry is another simple, but often forgotten, measure a homeowner can take. This helps in the identification of recovering property whether from a suspect or a pawn shop.”
