Neighbor Wars·
THE BREEZEWAY BATTLE
After a petty theft draws police attention, a neighbor accuses the next-door family, sparking a chain reaction of arrests, retaliation, and a baffling claim about unseen gunshots and missing dogs.
Should she stay quiet or keep calling police?
Be one of the first to vote.
The cops had just arrested the neighbors' boyfriend when his girlfriend started telling the complex that the woman next door had done it.
It started with a theft. In a mountain-area apartment complex, a 26-year-old mother lived on the ground floor with her husband, 32, and their 5-year-old daughter. Their breezeway was closed off on one side, shared with only one other neighbor. Then, over the course of about three hours, $100 to $200 worth of car supplies vanished from right by her front door.
A week later, she called police to file a report.
"I called the cops to file a report because I had $100-$200 worth of car supplies stolen from by my front door within a 3 hour period of time," she later said. When officers asked who she suspected, she pointed to the neighbors. A cop neighbor had checked his cameras, and no one was seen coming or going from that breezeway. She also mentioned something else: "they get the cops called and at least one of them will get arrested regularly."
That detail mattered. Police later found there was already a protective order against the boyfriend, put in place two weeks earlier after an arrest. They sent a patrol car to the complex to catch him there.
After that, the atmosphere changed fast. The neighbors began "screming at us, blaring their security system every time I open my front door," she said.
The next day, she left for about an hour to an hour and a half to pick up her daughter from school. When she came back, a patrol car was near the entrance. The boyfriend was outside with his dogs, talking to police and pointing toward her car.
She stopped and spoke with an officer, who told her to park near his partner. That second officer explained why they were there: the neighbors had called police claiming they "heard gunshots through their security camera" and had given her description.
"Crazy thing is, I don't even own a gun," she told the officer. She said she had been gone for the last hour and a half. She told him she believed the call was retaliation for the previous week.
The police detained the boyfriend. His dogs were taken by animal control.
Then came the part that spread around the breezeway. The girlfriend told neighbors that the woman next door got him arrested and got the dogs taken away. Later, the poster summed up the whole bizarre sequence with one line: "Funny thing is I don't remember calling the police yesterday but i guess i got him arrested guys🤷🏼♀️🤦🏼♀️😂"