The culprits moved through the subdivision, smashing windows on parked cars and grabbing what was readily available.
GPS units, some lighting for a building and other miscellaneous items were all reported stolen to the York-Poquoson Sheriff’s Office on Dec. 30 after owners of the affected vehicles discovered what had happened. For Katy Henderson, a resident of the subdivision — Banbury Cross off Newman Road in Upper York County — she found more than a few items missing: her Ford Expedition was gone.
“At about 9 a.m. I went outside to get my car to go teach yoga, and it wasn’t there,” Henderson said.
Sometime on the night of Dec. 29 or the early hours of Dec. 30, the Expedition was stolen along with the other items from vehicles at nearby residences. Banbury Cross is a neighborhood in Upper York County, located with some others in a sleepy residential area split from the commercial corridor in Lightfoot by Interstate 64.
She runs Studio South in Lightfoot, where yoga is combined with southern hospitality. To help advertise her business, she has the studio’s logo plastered across the back window of the Expedition, which was now missing.
For the crime to have hit any closer to home, the perpetrators would have had to break into her home, where she lives with her husband and three children. In addition to taking the Expedition, they went through her husband’s vehicle, where there was a spare key for her missing vehicle.
“The [Expedition] was parked right under our bedroom window,” Henderson said. “We didn’t hear anything.”
Henderson then called the York-Poquoson Sheriff’s Office to report what had happened. While she was on the line, the Hampton Police Department called to let her know the Expedition was in their custody.
Officers from the Hampton Police Department responded to the 1200 block of Shatto Drive in Hampton on Dec. 30 after receiving a report of an abandoned vehicle, according to Cpl. Mary Shackelford of the Hampton Police Department. They found the vehicle in a ditch. Investigation revealed that prior to being abandoned in the ditch, the vehicle had been traveling on Chesapeake Avenue, where it left the roadway and traveled through several residential front yards.
While driving through the yards, the Expedition struck three other vehicles. All told, the vehicle suffered some minor damage. Shackelford said nobody has been arrested in Hampton and that the investigation into the matter continues.
Henderson then spent several hours Dec. 30 traveling to Hampton and waiting to get her vehicle back. Whoever took the vehicle left Henderson’s car seats behind, as well as evidence that the vehicle had been used to egg and throw bottles.
“Cars can be replaced, but obviously it could have been way worse,” she said.
Prowling through residential areas looking out for vehicles that are easy targets is not an uncommon practice in the Historic Triangle. Just one day after Henderson’s vehicle was stolen, the James City County Police Department received seven reports of items stolen from vehicles on Barnes Road on the far western edge of James City County, near the New Kent County line.
Maj. Stephen Rubino of the James City County Police Department said most of the vehicles were rifled through sometime during the night of Dec. 30 and the morning of Dec. 31. All of the vehicles were unlocked, and whoever did it got away with cash, a few iPods, an electric drill and some other miscellaneous items.
There haven’t been any arrests in the Barnes Road incidents. Rubino said there is a “possibility” that those break-ins are connected to the ones in Banbury Cross as “we’ve found in the past that when we see a rash of these thefts, there’s oftentimes multiple people involved and they move around.”
There have been other spurts of vehicle break-ins in the Historic Triangle in recent months. Williamsburg Police released a mugshot of two women who may have been involved in a string of August break-ins on vehicles on Quarterpath Road. In that case, valuables were left in plain view inside locked vehicles. A 13-year-old boy was arrested in November after he allegedly rummaged through some vehicles in James City County.
In September, James City County Police received reports of nine unlocked vehicles being entered in the Baron Woods subdivision. In some of those cases, items were stolen.
In all of these cases — and several more police have investigated in the last year — the common factors have been either items left in plain view or vehicles left unlocked. In some cases, such as when a man stole a loaded handgun from a vehicle near Lightfoot in December, the stolen goods are left in a visible place in an unlocked vehicle.
“The two easiest ways to avoid being the victim of larceny from your vehicle is to one, lock your vehicle and two, don‘t leave anything of value inside your vehicle,” Rubino said.
Henderson, meanwhile, is thankful she got her vehicle back without too much damage.
“We think we’re in this little bubble,” she said, “but that’s not the case.”
Anyone with information on any crime in the Historic Triangle should call Crime Line at 888-LOCK-U-UP (888-562-5887).
