A local gardener is left reeling just before the holidays after thousands of dollars’ worth of gardening supplies were stolen from a truck in Reseda on Monday.
Rafael Sandoval said the incident happened around 2:30pm while he was working. He’s frustrated that they just ripped him off in broad daylight.
“It’s frustrating…why are you doing this in the middle of the day?” he said. “These people are not afraid of anything.”
A video posted online by Sandoval’s client shows two masked men searching his SUV before shattering the passenger side window. From there, they unlocked the trunk and loaded everything they could into the back of the car.
“All the lawn mowers, blowers, drills, weeders, trimmers, chainsaws, everything you have for gardening,” Sandoval said. “It’s very expensive. We had him work hard for over two months to get those tools.”
In total, he estimates he got about $7,000 worth of equipment.
While Sandoval says he has suffered losses in his 20 years of landscaping, he has never done anything like this.
“My tools, what I need for my work.”
On top of that, Sandoval says that with Christmas just around the corner, the timing for the theft couldn’t have been worse.
His clients understand why he couldn’t manicure his garden, he says, but his biggest concern so far is how impudent the thieves are.
“I do it in the daytime when the kids are walking. There are people there. It’s scary,” he said.
Sandoval has filed a police report, but doesn’t expect much from it. Instead, he hopes the surveillance video will help someone recognize one or both of the men in the video.
CBSLA Staff
