‘It's frightening’: At least 19 Redmond homes hit by burglars in 4 months

REDMOND -- A rash of home burglaries on the Eastside has neighbors on edge. In the city of Redmond alone, crooks ransacked 19 homes since the beginning of June.

The burglaries are happening in the middle of the day when most people are at work. The thieves are after cash, electronics and jewelry.

“It’s frightening,” neighbor Cathy Rivera said Wednesday. “You lock everything up. You do what you’re supposed to do, you get alarms, and yet they’re still managing to get through.”

Burglars targeting the Overlake neighborhood might think they’ve hit a gold mine.

“Everyone works and you come home to find you’ve been burglarized so it’s a big surprise,” she said. “It’s frustrating.”



“It’s a reminder for people to keep their doors and windows locked,” said the Redmond Police Department's Janessa Rosica.

Redmond police said crooks are entering homes by either smashing in back windows or doors, or simply crawling through unlocked windows or sliding doors. But before they break in, cops said, the thieves sometimes knock first.

“It was pretty crazy,” said homeowner Phillip Cady.

Cady said his family interrupted burglars last month in Sammamish.

“My wife came home and we’re pretty sure that they were still in the house because they had a car parked out back here and were just offloading stuff into the car,” he said.

“We normally keep them open so everything is being kept shut down now,” said Rivera.

Cops in Redmond are on the lookout for a white Lexus sedan and a red Toyota Paseo that might be involved in the burglaries.

Rivera now hopes the crooks will leave her family -- and her neighborhood -- alone.

“Stay away,” she said. “I mean, don’t they have anything better to do than to victimize these people?”

Fingerprints from recent crime scenes are being analyzed.

Police said homeowners should call 911 if they hear someone knocking on the door asking to speak to someone by a name they don’t recognize.