Video: woman caught stealing a wreath

Laughing Squid has a fun, voyeuristic video of someone stealing a Christmas wreath from a home in San Francisco's fancy Pacific Heights neighborhood. It's about 2AM, and the woman walks up onto the front porch and examines the wreath for a minute. She then steps away, puts on a head wrap, and comes back to snatch it.

• [jokel]

  Am I the only one seeing a freaky morphing demon dog just left of the pillar when the camera pans left? And that doodad on the right pillar looks eerily like a person. Are you sure this isn’t a Halloween movie?

• [Caroline]

  jokel, nope, I saw the freaky demon shape too. Isn’t it fascinating how hardwired we are to see faces?

• [thekinginyellow]

  that’s pretty funny! i could understand stealing one of those relatively cheap bay leaf wreaths just based on the value of bay leaves. i have no idea what this particular wreath is made out of but if it’s made of some kind of cooking herb and i needed bay leaves and/or rosemary i’d totally steal it, too! i in no way condone the cool crime of robbery. if my wreath had been stolen i would try to rig up some sort of pulley device that would scare the ever living crap out of the thief.

• [Xenu]

  Stealing and trampling people: the new holiday spirit!

• [Razzabeth]

  “I can sell this wreath for crack!”

• [SpacelordMother]

  That is odd! It’s amusing to me that she closely looks at it, as if to investigate the quality of materials or craftsmanship.

  I’d like to know what she did with it once she left?

  Was she ever caught for the crime?

• [Anonymous]

  why does the camera appear to be handheld and moving?

  • [dculberson]

    Apparently the owner of the security camera setup doesn’t know how to copy files off the DVR or whatever is used to store the video. They’ve recorded it by pointing a camera at a screen.

    It’s like someone printing out a web site then scanning and emailing it as a series of TIFFs instead of emailing a link. (Which is not a strictly hypothetical situation, sadly.)

• [JulianR]

  Oh no, you got this all wrong. Somebody else, who just happens to wear very similar clothes and practically the same pair of sunglasses, plus a head wrap, stole the wreath. That woman is innocent! And the perpetrator only looks like her.

• [JLKnap]

  Ahh she started out as a Christian – then came back disguised as a Muslim lady. That’s really bad behavior.

• [obdan]

  SpacelordMother I think that she’s just checking to see how the wreath is attached to the door

  ho ho ho

• [gilowyn]

  This is way too funny. :) Maybe she is just a modern-day Robin Hood? Stealing from the rich to then give the wreath to… I don’t know, a homeless shelter?

  Didn’t some priest just advice his congregation to shoplift from large chains? Same spirit, I guess.

• [Anonymous]

  Am I the only one who thinks that’s Sweet Dee from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia? I could see her doing that.

• [Anonymous]

  The camera appears to be handheld and moving because it appears to be filming video from a security tape. See the time stamp (“Just because I don’t know how it works doesn’t mean I’m lying!”) in the lower corner later in the video.

• [Anonymous]

  “It’s better to be stolen from than to have to steal”

• [Junglemonkey]

  I’m baffled. The woman looked well-put-together and confident. Sure, she was looking around, but she totally looked as though, if the homeowner opened the door, she could just say “Hi, I’m your neighbor. Could I borrow a cup of Christmas?” It makes me wonder whose house it was. There are several famous folks living in Pacific Heights. Perhaps it was less “I want a Christmas wreath for my house” and more “I want a memento from So-and-So’s house,” and they were afraid that breaking a finial off the wrought-iron gates would make too much noise.

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    I’m baffled.

    Two words: Winona Ryder.

• [Anonymous]

  Lot of good the security camera did…

• [Florsie]

  Now I know I’m not the only one whose fucking neighbors steal christmas ornaments. Someone has been stealing the lights from my porch.

• [Chuck]

  AHA! The War on Christmas ™ is going door-to-door now.

• [burlveneer]

  Parasocial Activity

• [helleman]

  Thanks #9 for the Strange Brew reference! Way to go, hoser!

• [mikebee]

  What an asshole. Yet another dent in the honor of my beloved San Francisco. What is wrong with people?!

• [Anonymous]

  Not only did the video require capturing, but also editing. If it was an old school system, it may have been on tape, which not everyone would have the means to capture and edit. If you notice the time stamps, quite some time passes between inspection and theft. Perhaps the woman inspected several wreaths before selecting this one for thieving. Ideally, the wreath would have been rigged with some type of theft deterrent, such as explosives…

• [Dan]

  There’s almost three minutes of my life I’ll never get back.

• [i_prefer_yeti]

  Yet another validation of my poison oak wreaths.

• [Osprey101]

  This is why I coat a good pen with a thin layer of Vaseline and put it in my desk drawer at work.