Car Thieves Return to Richmond
By Cynthia Drummond for BRVCA
April 14th 2025
RICHMOND – Car thefts, which were an issue last August, have begun again in Richmond and Charlestown.
A small group of thieves from Connecticut stole an Infiniti SUV from the owner’s driveway early Saturday morning. Richmond Police Chief Elwood Johnson described the pattern of the car thefts.
“They usually have one or two vehicles with several other suspects in them, and they are literally going into a neighborhood, going to vehicles parked outside, checking doors to see if they’re unlocked, if they are, they look for contents, including the key.” he said. “If the key’s in the vehicle and it’s a vehicle of interest, they’ll steal it.”
A video taken by the Ring doorbell at the residence and posted on social media shows the thieves taking the SUV just after 5 a.m. on Saturday.
“Just after 4 a.m., the suspects came into the community and went to various roads in town, including Kenyon Hill Trail, Tall Timbers, Fox Ridge and Chelsea Farm and Wisteria Lane,” Johnson said. “During that window of time, they were not successful in entering every vehicle. Again, they’re trying not to draw attention to themselves. These are not people looking to confront homeowners or property owners. They try to do it in the stealth of night when they can get away undetected. So, in this one instance, they were able to grab one vehicle, which was an Infiniti.”
Johnson said the owner of the vehicle was able to determine where it had been taken, based on attempted debit card activity, reported by the bank, along Interstate 95 in Connecticut.
The owner located the vehicle at about 6 p.m. on Sunday, and Richmond police processed the SUV on Monday morning.
“They went out and actually spotted their own vehicle in New Haven and then notified our department, and our detective went out this morning to process the vehicle and attempt to get some latent prints and some DNA samples, and we’ll see where that leads us,” Johnson said Monday.
Towning
The practice of driving to other towns to look for vehicles to steal is known as “towning.”
“Youth from Connecticut will go out to communities where people feel safe enough to leave their doors unlocked, and they’re not known to the people that live in that area, and they look for vehicles that are unlocked, in the early hours of the morning, and will take cars, if there are keys left with them and belongings, and if there are belongings left in the vehicle,” Johnson said. “So, our recommendation to anyone is that you simply hide your valuables, secure them inside your home, and you lock your vehicle. Most likely, they won’t smash the glass unless they see something worth stealing, because they don’t want to set off a car alarm or break glass.”
The new video doorbells, Johnson said, do not deter the car thieves.
“I think it helps to narrow down a suspect list or pattern of behavior, or how they’re doing it, what time it occurs, actually, and how many people might have been involved,” he said, “But if people are wearing hoodies and masks, it’s going to be difficult to identify them off of that without additional information. It’s always useful to have a video of an actual act to show that it did happen, what time it happened, whether there was a particular means of them entering the car.”
Johnson repeated his plea to residents to lock their cars.
“People let their guard down, and it’s normal, because they feel safe, they feel remote, they think it’s not going to happen here, and it’s convenient for them,” he said. “It’s not routine, but on the one night they decide to do that, this happens.”