A California father came face to face with a burglar who stole thousands of dollars in merchandise from his home in an altercation that was caught on home surveillance video.
"I haven’t been able to sleep in days and every little noise, I jump up to protect my family," Daniel Lobell, a podcaster who broadcasts from a bus he owns parked behind his house, told KTLA about the incident last Thursday when a thief scale his backyard wall and broke into the bus.
Lobell says the thief made off with approximately $25,000 of equipment.
"They stole my cameras. They stole my board. They stole my switcher. They stole my headphones. They stole my headphone amp, my memory cards," Lobell, who hosts a show called "Modern Day Philosophers", explained.
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Lobell noticed the door to the bus was open and then realized that his items had been stolen. However, he said the burglar brazenly returned to the West Los Angeles home and began wiping off his fingerprints from the bus in an effort to presumably cover his tracks.
"I’m looking down as I’m walking because I’m so upset, and I look up and there’s the guy, back two hours later cleaning his fingerprints off," Lobell told the outlet. "I said to him, ‘I’m going to kill you,’ and I went after him. I tried to grab the trampoline out of the play thing, to use it as a weapon, but I couldn’t get it out."
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Video shows the Lobell chasing the burglar through the yard before fleeing and Lobell said he has filed a police report in hopes of catching the burglar.
"One thing I keep reminding myself throughout this whole thing is that everything happens for a reason and God is good. And there’s something good that’s going to come out of this," Lobell said.
Burglaries and robberies continue to be a problem in Los Angeles over the past few years, and data shows that robberies both with and without guns were up in 2022 compared to 2021 and burglaries were up about 15% as well.
"I don’t know what it is, but maybe what’ll come out of this is this will cause a stir and the police will prioritize this, and they’ll get this guy, and it’ll restore peace of mind to myself and my wife, and we can sleep again at night. Maybe what else will come is that he won’t be able to do this to anyone else. Maybe it’ll raise awareness about these encampments."
Homeless encampments have also been a growing problem in Los Angeles and a study from the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority in 2022 estimated that 69,144 people were living on the streets in LA County, a 4.1% rise from 2020.
Lobell says he started a GoFundMe page to help replace his equipment.
