CBD resident takes deterring thieves into his own hands after truck windows repeatedly smashed

NEW ORLEANS (WVUE) – There were rashes of car break-ins from the Lower Garden District to City Park over the weekend and one resident in the CBD is fed up and fighting back.

Although he still has to replace his window, he came up with a deterrent that chased away the would-be thief Friday night.

“To see him like gleefully walk up and just smash my eighth window in the past couple months and jump in and then you know to see the detonation go off and his reaction,” the man described.

His broken window stings a little less than the other six times this has happened over the course of just eight weeks.

“I don’t want this guy to die for what he did, but I don’t want him to just be able to smash and grab and run away,” he said.

Surveillance video shows that the window-smashing thief triggers his loud, non-lethal triggered deterrent set up in the center console of the truck.

“He probably didn’t get hurt that bad, but it wasn’t pleasant and it might deter him and his friends and tell other people not to do this too because, without something like this, there is no consequence because they’re not going to get arrested,” he said.

This satisfaction is not something many others can claim.

Churchgoers at Sixth Baptist Church in the Lower Garden District had their cars broken into Sunday morning.

Several cars were also broken into at a school function in City Park Friday night.

City-wide, NOPD data shows vehicle burglaries are up 28-percent year to date. In the CBD, where this man lives, they’re up 116-percent.

“My condo is for sale. I don’t want to live there anymore because I can’t keep paying for windows,” he said. “It’s almost like a culture now on a big night, whether it’s something like the Final Four or you know, a holiday weekend, something like that, you can almost expect it in my neighborhood.”

He says his truck almost always is targeted. He believes the thieves are going for guns they assume are in trucks because he has left valuables in the past that have gone untouched.

“Leadership has failed and more ways than one when it comes to this situation, just crime in the area, like, I reported to the police almost every time and I don’t blame the police for this, they’re understaffed and like there’s too much crime. I really blame the fact that like these, these people get caught, and then they basically get bailed out,” he said. “Whoever did this, definitely, had a bad night. He might never do it again because every time he goes in there, this could happen to him.”

“It’s a small battle in the war, I guess, that no one else is fighting,” he added.

While this proved to be effective and non-lethal, this man does not encourage others to try and replicate his device.

NOPD says something rigged up to detonate can be considered a bomb and could be illegal.

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