A Mission, B.C., couple is issuing a message of vigilance after their vehicle, keys, passports, and more were stolen earlier this week.
Jim Cutts normally locks his work truck, but said the night he forgot is the night thieves swung by, got in the truck and used the garage door opener to enter the laundry room and take nearly everything of value.
“They crawled underneath, came in here, rifled through my wife’s car, then they went right into the back door and right there are all our keys for our vehicles, our house, everything, my machinery, the whole nine yards,” Cutts told Global News.
“My wife’s purse sitting right there and they got it. Scooped it, grabbed all the keys, there wasn’t any keys left, they got them all. Took my truck and away they went, gone.”
The break-in reportedly took place early Monday, around 1:30 a.m.
According to Cutts, the thieves tapped his and his wife’s credit cards the very same day at a 7-Eleven in Abbotsford.
It soon became clear the thieves were trying to access their accounts as well, but couldn’t get in without the passwords, he added.
“The whole week has just been a gong show,” he said. “The same day this happened, they were able to get into my phone somehow. My phone SIM card got affected by what they were doing.”
Cutts’ phone reportedly stopped working on Monday, around 5 p.m., sending his “stress level” soaring.
He said police further warned them that with his wife’s car keys in their possession, the thieves would soon return for her vehicle as well.
On Tuesday night, they did. But, by that time, the family had changed the locks, recoded the garage door and changed key access for the Range Rover.
“It was unnerving,” Cutts said. “You lull yourself to sleep thinking it’s not going to happen to you. Well, it can happen to anybody.
“Now you don’t know, when are they coming back? Will they get in? How many are there? What will they do this time?”
Mission RCMP was not immediately available to comment on this story.
Cutts said he’s sharing their story as a warning to others not to repeat his mistakes.
He said the first was forgetting to lock his truck that night; the second was keeping his wallet and passport in his truck, while his wife kept hers and her birth certificate in her purse.
“You gotta take precautions and I didn’t and I paid the price for that. The one night I didn’t lock my truck, they happened to be here. Perfect timing,” he said.
“The emotional cost is very high. I don’t wish this is on anybody.”
In the future, he said the pair will also take their garage door openers out of their vehicles with them.