'Who steals trees?' Neighborhood baffled by unusual crime caught on camera in north Houston

HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) -- It's a crime so bizarre, residents don't know what to think, and it's all caught on camera.

Home surveillance video from the near northside of Houston, near North Main and Quitman, shows a man casually walk up to a front lawn.

Then, he grabs a small tree and starts yanking.

Almost exactly a minute later, he goes for another tree.

Another angle shows him struggling with the roots. Ten minutes later, he's back, this time with a tool for help.

One neighbor even caught him in the act, yelling out the question all of us have.

"Why are you taking the tree?" she asked.

"I'm straightening it up," he answered.

Except this man wasn't their landscaper, he was just a guy in a bucket hat trying to pull a caper.

ABC13 found multiple holes in the neighborhood where trees had been snatched.

"Once the, 'Somebody took my stuff' moment passed, I was like, 'Who steals trees? Like, what? You stole a tree?' I don't understand,' Kelly Kindred said.

Kindred saw it happening on her front lawn through her home camera and texted her neighbor Olivia Topet.

Topet is a runner.

"I started running after him. I caught up with him a couple blocks away. He had put the tree in a grocery cart and then he went and he hid behind another tree that was still in the ground," Topet explained. "I said, 'You can't steal our trees. He looked at me and said, 'I'm sorry ma'am I'll put it back,' and then he ran away.'"

"'Is it something I would recommend other people do? No. Am I grateful that I have my tree back? Yes," Kindred said. "My other neighbor got in her jeep when she saw Olivia take off and followed her to make sure she was safe, so it's like girl power in this neighborhood."

Just as ABC13 was finishing up the interview with Topet, she had a realization.

Her bushes are gone too.

"Shrubs, trees, maybe nothing is safe, I don't know," she said. "I feel like I scared him, but I'm 100% sure he's doing this somewhere else. Probably right now."

Neighbors haven't reported the incident to police because they don't necessarily want the man arrested or punished. They just want him to leave their property alone.

Prosecutors at the district attorney's office cannot think of a time they have charged anyone with tree theft, but it is a crime, and it could happen.

As for the tree thief's motive, everyone is stumped.

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