Okay, so this happened a while ago, but it randomly popped back into my head and I figured I’d share because I’m still trying to wrap my brain around it.
Basically, my family home got broken into, but not in the “they took a laptop and some jewellery” kind of way. I mean completely stripped. It was like coming home and it looked like people had just deleted our house.
It was during a night where it was absolutely pouring rain. Proper heavy rain, low visibility, everyone inside kind of weather. At some point during that night, someone smashed through our front door. There was glass everywhere, and they got inside.
And then they didn’t just grab a few things and leave. They went full chaos mode.
Drawers were emptied. Stuff was thrown everywhere. But they also took basically everything. TVs were gone. The couch was gone. Kitchen stuff was gone, even cutlery. Just random household items were taken as well.
It wasn’t even selective. It felt like they just decided to take everything.
Our house was built in the 1970s and hadn’t really been modernised much. A lot of the original stuff was still there, like older style bathrooms, carpets, and fittings. It had that slightly frozen in time feel.
Which makes it even stranger, because it wasn’t like everything inside was super modern or high value. A lot of it was just normal old household stuff, but they still took it anyway.
We also had basically no security. No cameras, no alarm system, nothing like that. We always thought we would be fine because we live on a pretty busy road, so it never really crossed our minds that something like this could happen.
Here’s the part that really messes with me.
Neighbours were literally home.
People were in their houses, awake, just having a normal night. And they actually saw a big truck parked outside our place.
A truck.
And nobody called it in.
In hindsight it sounds insane, but when we spoke about it later, it was all things like they thought it might be a delivery, or removalists, or they weren’t sure what was going on. It was raining, visibility was bad, and people didn’t want to get involved in case it was something dodgy.
So basically confusion and hesitation meant no one acted.
By the time anyone realised something was wrong, it was too late.
The police came, and at first they weren’t even completely sure it was a break in, just because of how chaotic everything looked inside. But once they saw the broken front door and the glass everywhere, it was clear.
They later said it was most likely an organised crime group because of how it was done, the use of a truck, and the fact that the house was completely cleared out in a very systematic way.
But they never caught anyone.
The weirdest part is that we were the only house on the entire street that got hit. No one else was targeted, nothing was taken from nearby houses.
And the strangest coincidence is that my sister and I were actually planning to be home that night, like we usually were.
For whatever reason, we weren’t.
I still think about that sometimes, even though logically I know it probably would have just scared them off if anyone was home.
Still, it’s a really strange feeling knowing people were inside your house like that.
Anyway, I just wanted to share because I know there are a lot of burglary stories on here, but I didn’t realise until this happened how organised and fast some of these groups can be.
Has anyone else experienced something similar where it was more than just a quick theft, or where neighbours saw something but didn’t realise until afterwards?