A Gordon Head resident was surprised when a suspected mailbox thief licked her doorbell camera on Thursday night.
“It was a strange incident,” said Kathy Erickson, whose security camera caught the whole incident.
The thief snuck onto her front porch around 9 p.m. on Oct. 17. Erickson had just put her children to bed and was watching T.V. when she got a notification saying that motion was detected by the doorbell camera.
She watched the video and then ran to the door – there was nobody there.
The video showed the suspect rummaging through her mailbox. They then turned around and licked the doorbell camera before walking away. Other than an election flyer – which the suspect took but then discarded in the driveway – the mail box was empty.
After watching the video for the first time, Erickson sat down and reflected on the strange incident. She decided to report it to the Saanich Police. When officers came by to view the video, “they were quite amazed,” she said.
Her next step was to sanitize everything the suspect had touched.
Erickson thought it was odd that someone would sneak onto her porch so early in the evening with cars in the driveway.
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She also noted that the suspect would have known they were on camera as the doorbell camera has five red dots that light up when it begins recording and a light also flicks on so the porch is visible in the video. She wonders if licking the doorbell was an act of defiance.
“I found the situation really bizarre but I don’t feel overly concerned,” she said, although she remembered feeling violated at first.
Erickson hopes this was an isolated incident. She didn’t recognize the woman but advises others to keep their eyes peeled.
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