Just after 6am Monday, a man in a black SUV backed up to the store and began trying to break in. He left and came back not once, not twice, but three times.
"He's got to be the worst criminal," said Sheri Stack with Pet City Houston. "It took him over an hour to get in the store."
Finally, using his SUV, he attached a chain or cable of some sort to the burglar bars and yanked a portion of them off the door on his fourth attempt. You can see him then crawl inside through a small hole left in the door. Within a minute, the thief grabbed three English bulldog puppies from the back of the store.
Sheri said, "I think the reason he took three is because he couldn't carry four."
Exiting that same hole in the burglar bars, the thief had to drop the dogs before he could sneak out, having to corral them again before loading into his SUV and speeding off. The dogs are sold for $2,500 or more. Store owners figure they were stolen to be sold or bred. The problem, they say, is English bulldogs are high maintenance. They can't take extreme heat and often come down with skin conditions or ear infections.
"Oh, it's horrible," Sheri said. "He should be caught. He should be arrested and convicted of this. It's just despicable."
Store owners can't believe no one out driving between 6 and 7am saw the guy break in. There's a McDonald's drive-through within direct line of sight. What's more, they say the burglar alarm was set. But despite the break-in there was no automatic call to police or the owners.
"The alarm company's not doing their job," said Paul Stack of Pet City Houston. "It's probably time to switch to a new alarm company."
We called the alarm company repeatedly for comment and no one has yet returned our calls.
