Residents in San Diego's Shelltown neighborhood say their flood-damaged homes are already unsafe, but they are now dealing with another safety concern: burglars breaking into their vacant homes.
The sound of rain brings back tough memories for Eddie Menjivar.
He is among the 1,200 San Diegans displaced from their homes during the Jan. 22 floods.
“We have trauma,” he said.
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To make matters worse, last weekend, his home and car were vandalized.
“I was one the first victims of vandalism. They broke my house windows and one of my vehicles over here, they busted out the windows too. Many neighbors had the same problem. They went with weapons inside of the houses to steal something,” Menjivar said.
He’s not the only flood victim dealing with the issue. Anna Ramirez’s home was targeted by burglars earlier this month.
“We've also had burglaries. We've had people break into our home and steal these big machines. And you know what if we go back there and then something goes wrong? You know, they break in and somebody gets hurt,” Ramirez said.
Menjivar said the Shelltown neighborhood turns into a ghost town after construction workers leave. He thinks burglars take advantage of the night hours to break into the vacant homes.
After the vandalism incident he experienced, Menjivar decided to stay that night in his home and said he noticed people who were not his neighbors.
“This is the criminal guys that are jumping up in the properties,” Menjivar said.
NBC 7 reached out to the San Diego Police Department to ask if they had seen an uptick in burglaries in flood-damaged neighborhoods. Officials said there were a half-dozen break-ins right after the flooding and through the end of January. Another six residential burglaries have been reported since the start of February, including two incidents were responding officers found suspects inside homes and arrested them. In another pair of reports, property was stolen, once from a locked tool shed and once from the front yard of a home.
