To catch a thief

Had some excitement here at 2am this morning. DH was up (as usual) sitting at his desk. He has one monitor that is just on showing the security cameras. I guess one of the motion lights coming on caught his eye and he sees a guy walking down the street carrying a big 5 gallon gas can (remember this is a dead end private road for just 3 houses). He gets to our good neighbors driveway and turns and walks down it! DH runs in our bedroom to grab the phone to call the police and tells me to call our neighbor and let him know there is someone on his property. It seemed like all that only took a minute or so, but I guess it must have been a bit longer. It took me 2 tries to dial neighbors number on DH's cell phone.

I'm standing at our front window to watch and see if the guy leaves neighbors property (I think DH was putting his gun in his holster about this time) and I hear some yelling coming from the neighbors. Our neighbor had gone out on his porch (2nd story porch) and lit up his yard with a bright flashlight and saw the guy and yelled at him. As DH is flying out the door I hear the scumbag yelling "I just need gas, I have money, I was just going to knock on your door" and DH and our scary barking young pup rush up to the fence (it's 4' chain link so easily seen through), shining a light on the scum, telling him to stop and stay there.  DH pulled out his gun and told him to get down, stay and not move until the police arrived. I then called 911 to tell them our neighbor and my husband actually caught the prowler just reported. They were like "ya, we got the first call, it's been dispatched". I'm like "I know, but I thought you should know the guy was caught and being held".  Our neighbor holds his flashlight on him too (I'm sure he was carrying his gun, he own alot of guns) and the guy is trying to talk his way out of this. "I just ran out of gas, I was coming to knock on your door, blah blah". DH is like tell it to the cops, its 2 in the morning. The scumbag says "you can't hold me - I'm going to call the cops" and DH says please do. He does and tells them a guy his holding him at gun point and he just needs gas, that he drives a Subaru and it's parked down the street.  (several gas stations are literally a mile walk away) Finally after like 20 minutes the cops show up, one talks to neighbor and DH and the other takes the scumbag over to the police car and questions him for awhile. Makes him take all his stuff out of his pockets. Then they let him go!

We are sitting in our living room talking about all of it and the scumbag drives up in his car (wait! I thought he was out of gas?!) and stops where the cops had talked to him and gets out and starts searching on the ground. Guess he lost something when he emptied his pockets. Picks it up and leaves.  DH reviews the security video (which shows our neighbors front area pretty good, also) and the guy actually spent almost 4 minutes walking back and forth between neighbors 2 vehicles and also went around the side of his house. He was totally scoping the place out. Neighbor went back outside to check his cars for any entry type of damage and found the guys siphon hose he tossed when he got caught.

Well, now it will be interesting to see how much more neighbor will be acting like all this activity we've been having the past months is worth ignoring. He's lucky DH was on the ball and being vigilant for these scumbags. He has a lot of "stuff" outside on the side of his house/shop that could easily get stolen. It's all on racks he put up next to his shop. Not sure what it all is, but I'm sure thieves could sell it for something.