ALBANY PARK — A man walked into the front yard of an Albany Park home and yanked one of the neighbor’s prized flowers out of the ground Tuesday morning.
And the flower theft was caught on video.
Home surveillance video taken in the 4800 block of North Spaulding Avenue shows two men walking by the home at about 7:50 a.m. Tuesday. As they walk past, one of the men, dressed in a blue shirt and brown pants, opens the front gate to the yard and plucks a large yellow flower from its stem.
He then pulls off the flower’s leaves and exits the yard, haphazardly leaving the front gate open. The two men then continue walking.
“That flower’s been blooming very beautifully and we’ve been watching it for a long time,” said Ana Jasso, daughter of the woman who lives there, noting that her mom routinely shows off the flower to people passing by.
“She’s so proud of it,” Jasso said.
Jasso’s mother has been tending to her garden for more than three years, and recently she add more pots of flowers to it, her daughter said. Her mother loves her plants and considers them her babies.
The flower the man destroyed was a yellow-star dahlia, Jasso said.
On Monday, Jasso’s mother took her dog out for a walk and noticed the front gate was open. Then she realized that someone had yanked one of her favorite flowers from its stem. She later checked the security footage and saw what happened.
Jasso posted the footage and stills of the man who entered the yard on Monday to Facebook and asked if anyone knew who he was.
Jasso said her mother was told she couldn’t file a police report because she did not have a “no trespassing” sign, even though the garden is clearly on the home’s property behind a fence.
“The gate was left open, so what if her dog had gotten out?” Jasso said. “People have to be respectful of other people’s property.”
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