An unidentified man was caught on surveillance camera video casually taking seedlings from people’s front yards in north Houston.
Watch: Video shows thief tearing down trees in Houston neighborhood
Surveillance footage shows a man wearing a fishing hat pulling out saplings in front of houses in Texas.
Stealing trees is rare, so Houston residents were baffled when they discovered a strange man ripping up saplings and leaving holes in residents’ front yards.
Surveillance video from a home in north Houston on August 22 shows the man walking up to a randomly selected sapling in broad daylight and tugging on the young tree until it pops out.
Moments later, after the man had ripped out the previous tree, he moved on to another one in the same area. A security alarm scared the man off before he could take the second sapling. Surveillance video then shows the alleged owners of the homes the man had invaded replanting the saplings in their yards.
Watch the mysterious Houston tree thief in action
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“What? You stole a tree?”
Another video obtained by ABC13 Houston shows the man’s behavior from a different angle. A woman can be heard asking him, “Why are you taking the tree?” The man replies, “I’m cleaning it up.”
Several holes from which trees had been stolen were discovered in the neighborhood, the television station reported.
“After the moment passed where I thought, ‘Someone stole my stuff,’ I thought, ‘Who steals trees? So what? You stole a tree?’ I don’t understand,” Kelly Kindred, a homeowner in the neighborhood, told ABC13 Houston.
Kindred texted her neighbor, Olivia Topet, who immediately ran to catch the tree thief.
“I ran after him. I caught up with him a few blocks away. He had put the tree in a shopping cart and was hiding behind another tree that was still in the ground,” Topet said, according to the TV station. “I said, ‘You can’t steal our trees.’ He looked at me and said, ‘I’m sorry ma’am, I’ll put it back,’ and then he ran away.”
“Shrubs, trees, maybe nothing is safe”
During ABC13 Houston’s interview with Topet, she noticed that her bushes were gone.
“Shrubs, trees, maybe nothing is safe, I don’t know,” she told the TV station. “I feel like I scared him, but I’m 100 percent sure he’s doing it somewhere else. Probably right now.”
Homeowners in the neighborhood have not reported the tree theft to Houston police because they do not want the man arrested or punished. They just want him to leave their property alone, ABC13 Houston reported.
USA TODAY has contacted Houston police, who are investigating reports of tree thefts in the area.
