Crime: Burglary
Victim: Susan Inman
Date: Tuesday, July 24
Time: Around 10 a.m.
Location: 9500 block of Mill Trail
It wasn’t funny. It was hilarious.
Susan Inman had pulled into her driveway on the back side of her house. As usual, she opened her garage door and was soon traipsing back and forth to the house unloading her groceries — all the while with the garage door open.
“I went upstairs to ask my son to come help me, so that gave me a little more time in the house on that run,” she says.
When Inman came back out to the garage, she saw a young man picking up her blue Schwinn mountain bike. She yelled at him to put it down.
“I don’t know why I thought yelling at him would put the fear of God into him, but I hoped it would,” she says.
Instead, the man hopped on the bike and rode westbound down the alley toward White Rock Trail. Inman, in flip-flops, ran after him.
“That was the most irritating thing I’ve ever experienced. It was hilarious. I mean I couldn’t believe he had the audacity … I’m telling you he was maybe 20 feet from me when this episode started. I think it’s frustrating that he could look me in the eye and just keep going,” she says.
Inman kept running after the brave biker even when he tried to trick her. He steered into a driveway along the alley as if he was trying to take a short cut.
“I guess he thought that would fool me, but I just kept running after him,” she says.
Inman then ran back to her house where repairmen were in her back yard fixing the pool.
“I sent them after him in their truck and I sent my children after him, too. We were going to save the neighborhood,” she laughs.
Inman then called police. The officers filed a report, but there are no leads on a suspect at this time.
Inman is sure her neighbors have experienced similar crimes. She and many of her neighbors in Royal Highlands have garages that face an alley behind their homes. This makes open garages open targets for crime.
“Alleyways are not well traveled. Homeowners can’t see from the front what is going on in the back of the house. Neighbors can’t see, and neither can police unless they’re looking for something,” says Dallas Police Sr. Cpl. Terri Smith of the North Central Dallas Police Department. “It’s so important to keep those garage doors closed,” she says.
Smith says even when you’re unloading items from the car, always have someone keeping an eye on things or close the garage door immediately. It may be worth the extra inconvenience if it saves your property.
Inman may have received a good work-out trying to catch the man who stole her bike, but Smith warns never to run after a suspect for any reason.
“You just never know,” she says.
