A Billings family was shocked to see a group raiding its decorations on Christmas morning.
Two people went up driveway and grabbed decorations.
Another person went across the street and appeared not to take anything.
They all got back in the truck and headed west on Stone Street.
“It's like, here comes the Grinch stealing our Christmas decorations,” said Evan Burgess.
Seven-year-old Evan was first one up on Christmas morning and alerted his parents.
“He's so sweet and innocent,” Amber Burgess said about her son Evan. “He wasn't worried about it the rest of the day.”
Surveillance camera video shows a pick-up truck stopped on Stone Street around 7:30 that morning.
“You can tell that he was wearing like a blue sweatshirt,” Amber Burgess said. “The other person looks smaller that came to try to grab more stuff out of our yard and then the person across the street was wearing black. You couldn't really tell.”
Amber Burgess and her husband looked at the video and out her window.
“All we know is it was a black older Ford pickup,” Amber said. “And their truck bed was full of stuff, so I don't know how many houses in our neighborhood."
“I just thought I saw a kid with the woman,” Evan said. “And then they just almost ran over their toes and then they just got into the truck and then they just turned right on to the street.”
The unusual crime shook the neighborhood with many surprised to hear about Christmas morning crooks.
“We heard some crashes and some tires stuff peeling off,” said Joe Martinez, who lives next door to the Burgesses. “But we didn't know like what it was, and normally like we said, we don't hear stuff like that around here. Our neighborhood’s pretty quiet. We all know each other, so it's pretty out of the ordinary for something like to happen down on this end.”
“That is awful,” said Dion Ontiveros, who lives two houses from the Burgesses. “People are enjoying family, enjoying everything about Christmas and something like that happens. “It just puts a damper on everything.”
The Burgesses live in the home where Amber grew up in the 1990’s.
But Amber says the neighborhood has changed.
“My hope was to pass it down to my son, but at this point I want to get outside of town,” Amber said. “I don't feel safe here anymore.”
Perhaps an abrupt start to Christmas morning, although the Burgesses were determined not to let it ruin their celebration.
“We still had a great day minus the little setback,” Amber said. “Decorations can be replaced. So it didn't really damper our holiday one bit.”
