Caught On Tape: Crook Breaks Into Laundromat, But It’s His Accomplice Who Will Shock You

A surveillance video from a laundromat in Northwood, Ohio has provided the latest candidate in the ongoing competition for Dad of the Year. The incident happened on May 16, and the crook managed to break into a locked storage room at the Northwood Coin Laundry on East Andrus Road in Northwood. He left without taking anything.

But that’s not what is so remarkable about this otherwise unremarkable, minor crime. What is truly amazing is how this miscreant tries to cover his tracks. View the video and you’ll see.

The man at first walks around the laundromat casing the joint, clearly looking for the location of surveillance cameras and how they are wired together. Once he thinks he has it all figured out, the next step is to remove the wires that connect the cameras, disabling the security video and enabling the thief to go undetected — or so he thinks.

But how to reach those wires, which run along the ceiling? For that, the man turns to his accomplice — a toddler.

Presumably, the little guy is the man’s son, but that hasn’t been confirmed because this would-be burglar has not yet been apprehended. But whoever the boy is, you’ll see the man lift the toddler up to the ceiling where the by can reach the camera wires and pull them out.

“I couldn’t believe what I was seeing on the video,” said Northwood Police Sergeant Doug Hubaker of Northwood Police Department. “This guy picking up or probably a 3-year-old child to boost him up to pull the wires from the camera. As a parent it’s appalling.”

Contributing to the belief that the man was the boy’s father, there was a woman in the laundromat who was apparently with the man and the toddler. She completes this charming, apparent family outing by doing the laundry while the boys in the family figure out how to rob the place.

Police say that the thief had broken into a lock-box outside the laundromat and stolen a key, which he used to open a door inside the coin-op. But the door led only to an empty storage space.

The owner of the laundromat believes that the attempted burglar was trying to gain access to an ice cream shop next door.