Residents Interrupts Overnight Theft from Auto; Suspect Fires Shot
Published on January 30, 2022
Palo Alto, CA – During an interrupted overnight theft from auto case, a suspect fired a handgun at the resident who was chasing them. The shot missed. The suspects fled the scene and remain at large.
On Saturday, January 29, 2022, at about 11:58 p.m., our 24-hour dispatch center received a call of a shot fired during an interrupted theft from auto that had just occurred in the 3600 block of South Court. The caller advised that the suspects fled in a vehicle, and that he had not been hit. Officers responded to the area immediately (as did personnel from the Palo Alto Fire Department as a precautionary measure) but could not locate the suspects.
The investigation revealed that the victim, a man in his thirties, noticed lights shining in the street outside his home. When he looked outside, he saw multiple suspects walking down the street with flashlights, shining the lights into parked cars and trying to open car doors. He went outside to confront them and found one of the suspects standing by the open driver’s door of his car in his driveway. The victim chased the suspects on foot as they ran to a waiting getaway vehicle. As the suspects were getting into the vehicle, the victim heard what he believed to be a gunshot and believed he saw the impact of the round on the pavement in front of him. The victim never saw the weapon. The vehicle left northbound on South Court and then eastbound on East Meadow Drive. The victim then called police. The suspects did not take anything from the victim’s unlocked car, but he noted they had rummaged through the center console.
Officers located an expended casing from a .40 caliber handgun at the scene and will be processing it for evidence. A neighborhood check revealed at least two other unlocked vehicles on South Court that had been opened and rummaged through.
The victim from South Court described the five or six suspects he saw as males, about 5 feet 9 inches tall with larger builds. Two were wearing hooded sweatshirts (one gray, and one yellow). The victim described their vehicle as a dark-colored full-size sport utility vehicle. A still image of the suspect vehicle from a neighbor’s surveillance camera on South Court is attached to this release.
Later in the night, at about 12:45 a.m. on January 30, police received another call from a resident in the 700 block of Talisman Court reporting that they had reviewed surveillance camera footage showing that at about 11:20 p.m., a group of suspects had been rummaging through unlocked vehicles in that location as well. Police believe it is likely these were the same suspects from South Court. Two still images from Talisman Court (one depicting two suspects rummaging through a victim vehicle, the other depicting the suspect vehicle itself) are attached to this release. The suspect vehicle appears to be a sport utility vehicle with chrome rims.
Police are actively investigating these incidents. Officers recommend always locking your car doors overnight to prevent thefts, and always calling police promptly to report suspicious activity. While overnight thefts from auto (cases where the suspect does not have to force entry to the car because the doors are left unlocked), as well as auto burglaries (cases where the suspect forcibly enters a locked car, often via window smash), are not uncommon in any city in the Bay Area, shots being fired during the commission of them are rare. There have been no similar incidents in Palo Alto or neighboring cities recently of which we are aware where a shot was fired.
At this point in the investigation, police are still working to confirm how many cases may be connected to these suspects from overnight; it often takes victims time to notice items missing from an unlocked car unless there is an overt sign that the vehicle has been rummaged through. If you are the victim of an auto burglary or theft from auto, you can either call our 24-hour dispatch center at (650) 329-2413, or file a report yourself online at www.cityofpaloalto.org/onlinereports.
Anyone with information about this incident is asked to call our 24-hour dispatch center at (650) 329-2413. Anonymous tips can be e-mailed to paloalto@tipnow.org or sent via text message or voice mail to (650) 383-8984.