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A woman who’s become that latest victim of jugging is hoping surveillance video will not only help catch the suspects but will also serve as a message to others.
The incident is something Maricela Martinez used to say would never happen to her whenever she would see a “jugging” incident on the news.
“It will never happen to me,” Martinez used to say.
Except this time, it did happen to her, and now Baytown police are currently investigating who the suspects are.
“I had to share it, people have to see,” she said.
On Thursday evening, Martinez had already made one stop at a bank.
“I had a suitcase with me and it was red, I took it inside the bank,” she said.
She was getting ready to make another deposit at the Wells Fargo bank on Garth Road when her mother called her to pick up a check. So she drove there, which was only a couple blocks away. Looking back, she said she let her guard down.
“I left not thinking,” she told ABC13. “I left the car open.”
Home surveillance video shows a car pull up and a man jumps out and takes her bags.
“Five minutes, about five minutes,” she said, from the time she pulled up, went inside and then realized her bags were gone.
It was a neighbor who saw the crime and ran over to tell her.
“He said that ‘Somebody took something from your car,'” she said. “When I opened my car, my bags weren’t there anymore.”
The crooks took $700 in cash that day, but Martinez says she realizes it could have been worse.
“I’m glad that they didn’t attack me or wait for me to get off with a bag, and try to take it away from me or anything,” she said.
She’s now hoping people pay attention and police solve this crime.
“(Police will) probably catch them and hopefully they do, because it was too easy for them to do it for me,” she said