Residents in a Fremont neighborhood were left stunned after an entire group of mailboxes were stolen from a townhouse complex.
Surveillance video showed two men taking off with more than a dozen of them, all full of mail.
“All this happened within hardly a minute and it’s pretty crazy how fast they acted,” said Mayank Chopra of Fremont.
The video shows a white Dodge pickup with black rims pull up last Thursday around 2:30 p.m.
Get top local stories in San Diego delivered to you every morning. Sign up for NBC San Diego's News Headlines newsletter.
Then, one of the two men appears to use a wrench to loosen the bolts on what’s called a cluster box because it has more than 16 mailboxes inside of it.
After a couple minutes, when the coast is clear, they pick it up, put it in the truck, and take off.
Chopra drove by minutes before it was stolen, but says he didn’t suspect anything until he returned home.
U.S. & World
“I saw this video from our community, someone sharing that the mailbox is gone, and that’s when I realized these people were coming in and in the daylight just took the mailbox away,” he said.
Fremont police are investigating the incident.
Back in October, the U.S. attorney announced a new push to crack down on mail thieves targeting large mailboxes and on criminals who have been attacking mail carriers to steal and illegally copy master keys that open them.
“To any copycats or wannabes out there who might consider robbing a postal worker, I ask you to consider the years you will face in federal prison, said Rafael Nunez, chief postal inspector at U.S. Postal Inspection Service.
Neighbors are left worrying about what was taken and hoping someone gets caught.
“We all, as a community, are still digesting this thing. For us it’s pretty much new, we never thought about it,” said Chopra.
