ST. LOUIS – The owners of nearly a dozen cars were left cleaning up broken glass because of a series of car break-ins near Hampton and Fyler.
Sayed Ahmed feels lucky because his car hasn’t been broken into yet, but he worries it’s just a matter of time.
“Any car. I don’t know what their criteria of choosing specific cars but it happens on expensive cars, cheap cars, beaters. It’s just been happening,” he said.
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Ahmed set up security cameras after the car break-ins started in his neighborhood earlier in the summer, but said it is difficult to see the faces of the thieves.
“We see them holding flashlights in their hands trying to break into one of the cars and trying to start it up, but they couldn’t get away with the car,” he said. “It took about 15 minutes or 10 minutes. They took their sweet time, no problem. But we really have no idea who they are.”
Ahmed takes out all of his valuables from the car every night to hopefully prevent his car from becoming a target, but he and his neighbors are still worried.
“People are a working class. Senior people, disabled people, people who are living day-to-day, life is hard. These are the people who are the target in here. People who cannot afford anything,” he said.
Though Ahmed and his family have lived in the area for more than 10 years, he said safety has never been a concern before now.
“I never have seen something like that. It just keeps happening in the past 45 days, like pretty much every day or every other day,” he said. “Like every morning we wake up, like okay, whose car got broken in today?”