NATOMAS —
The victims of a Natomas home burglary are crediting social media for helping them catch the culprit. While one teen is behind bars, Sacramento police are still searching for his accomplice.
Jacqueline Diaz told FOX40 at first she and her husband didn’t even know they were the victims of a crime.
“The actual robbery took place on Thursday, between 3 and 4 p.m. And it wasn’t until actually Saturday morning that we realized things were missing,” Diaz said.
That’s because their front door was not kicked open nor were any windows broken. But after they couldn’t find several computers and some jewelry, the Diaz family knew something was wrong.
“Thinking who would have done this, thinking they had to have a key, so is it one of my friends? One of my family?” Diaz said.
Diaz went to her next door neighbor’s house, who had surveillance video equipment. Sure enough, he had captured video of the break in, and Diaz saw the two suspects taking items from her home.
“I can’t even explain it to you when you see that, it’s like wow, and there they were running with our property in their hands, putting it in their car,” Diaz told FOX40.
Officers told Diaz they believe the suspects used a bump key, a device that tricks the lock into believing the key is in it. But Diaz turned to social media to find out who the suspects were.
“And we got a perfect still of him. So once the police came, and I got their permission, they actually advised me to put it on social media and I went ahead and put it on the site Nextdoor… Sure enough within an hour we got a name,” Diaz said.
Monday morning, the Sacramento Police Department said it arrested a juvenile male charging him with one count of burglary. Detectives are still searching for his accomplice. Now Diaz is glad some of her things were returned.
“They had gone through the whole house, I didn’t realize all they had taken,” Diaz said.
Diaz believes the suspects broke into at least one other home in her neighborhood. Police are not releasing the suspect’s name because he is a minor.
