Andrew Cade packed up his family on Thanksgiving. He piled them into the car on Thursday afternoon, trimmings and trappings in tow, pulled out of the garage of his house on the 800 block of South Harvey Avenue, heading to his in-laws’ house in Chicago.
But when they came back just hours later, crammed full of stuffing, Cade saw the lights on in his house and knew something was wrong.
He called the police before going into his home, and lo and behold, roughly $6,700 in goods were missing.
An Apple desktop computer, two Apple laptops, an iPod Touch, a Playstation 3, an Epson digital camera and jewelry were gone. Police think the perpetrator or perpetrators may have come in through a first-floor window.
“We were only gone for a few hours,” Cade said. “We left when it was daylight, and came back when it was dark.”
While Cade said he’s angry that it happened on Thanksgiving, he found it more upsetting that it’s not the first time it’s happened to him this year.
In fact, this is the fifth time he’s been burglarized this year, he said.
“Someone’s just been breaking in on a regular basis,” he said. “It’s just been pretty frustrating.”
Most of those have been to his car or his garage, he said, and none of those had been inside his home. The boldness of the criminals has been unsettling, though.
“I’m a former marine, I’ve got stickers on my truck and stuff, so they know I’m not scared,” Cade said. “If I’ve got an opportunity, I’ll point a BB gun out the window, but I haven’t even had the opportunity to do that.”
Anyone with information should call Oak Park police at 708-386-3800.
