Two families have near run-ins with burglars. One incident took place in Hawthorne and the other was in Parsippany. In both cases, the families had frightening experiences.
In Parsippany, home surveillance video shows three masked men rushing a house and trying to get inside through doors and windows in both the front and back of the home. All three are masked and one is holding a crowbar.
They don’t gain entry but the homeowner is convinced the suspects wanted to steal the cars in the driveway. One of the cars was a convertible BMW and the other was a GMC SUV.
In Hawthorne, car theft may have also been the motive. Police are looking for a person spotted on an indoor surveillance camera. He was inside the home on Van Winkle Avenue on Dec. 12 while a woman and her adult son were in the house. Neither had any idea the man was in the home until two days after the event.
By chance, on that Monday, the homeowner says she had been testing a camera in the living room on the night the suspect entered the house. On Wednesday, while reviewing it, she found an image of the man.
It doesn’t appear anything was stolen. The homeowner believes the person may have been looking for key fobs to the two high-end vehicles in the driveway.
“I haven’t slept yet because it’s that disruptive to your life that someone would feel so bold as to walk into your hour and I don’t know what he was looking for,” the homeowner told News 12.
That family has since changed their locks and added indoor and outdoor cameras to the property.
“I felt sick to my stomach. I’ve been here for 13 years,” she said. “I love this town. This is a quiet town, and to have an intruder come into our home like this just disrupts everything.”
Hawthorne police have said there was no forced entry and there were no other burglaries in the area that night.