A Southwest Lubbock couple took action after they were targeted by burglars for the third time in a month and a half.
Kalea and Omar Hernandez have lived near the corner of 97th Street and Avenue V since January 2015. They claim groups of teenagers have canvassed the neighborhood recently, targeting their property and their neighbors too.
“We’ve got 3 separate incidents on our surveillance alone,” Kalea said.
They said burglars made off with military equipment from their truck in July. Both Kalea and Omar, who currently serve as Army Reserve Soldiers in addition to their regular day jobs, said watching the surveillance video of that burglary was difficult.
“Kind of makes you feel like you’ve been violated when you have your stuff taken from you,” Kalea explained.
In the early morning hours of September 22, their security system picked up a group of four people walking around on their street, looking through windows of vehicles and homes.
“Decided that we were going to pay more attention to it,” Kalea said, who planned to be more vigilant with monitoring the surveillance cameras. “I’m going to watch these cameras, and find these guys.”
And she did. On September 26 around 3:00 a.m., Kalea spotted another group of burglars, and they charged after the suspects.
“I woke up my husband, we grabbed our weapons, shot out the door and caught two of them. And the other two ran off,” she explained as she shared the surveillance video.
“We did what we had to do,” she said.
“Saw them, headed out the door. She went one way, I went the other,” Omar added.
The couple held two of the would-be burglars until Lubbock Police arrived.
“We have some things that we take dear to heart, if they come in and start taking stuff from our vehicles, next thing you know, it’s going to be inside our house,” Omar explained.
“I’m hoping they two teenagers gave up enough information to start getting other people,” he said.
“It’s important that we all have each other’s backs,” Kalea added. “We work hard for what we have and it just kind of sucks that as young as these kids are that they’re doing what they’re doing.”
“I’m just glad nobody got hurt and glad we weren’t put in a threatening position and that it didn’t end in a bad way,” she said. “Luckily those two were really scared when they had a gun pointed in their face.”
