Suspects caught on camera stealing USPS truck, hundreds of pieces of mail in West Seattle

SEATTLE – Postal inspectors need your help finding the man who drove away with a mail truck in West Seattle right before Christmas.

That truck was located just a few blocks away, but a couple hundred pieces of mail were missing before authorities arrived.  Surveillance video shows a man in a black hoodie with an oversized jean jacket and light-colored pants somehow getting inside a locked USPS mail truck.

This happened a day before Christmas Eve just after noon in West Seattle’s Seaview neighborhood. Neighbors are just as frustrated for their postal workers.

“It just makes me hugely sad,” said Rebecca Hoch, who lives in the area. “We have a really great crew in this neighborhood. They’re all really personable.”

“Someone going out of their way to do something nice for somebody else, it’s not going to be received it’s not going to be experienced,” said Lance Campbell, the neighborhood block captain of west Seattle.

The Seattle division’s postal inspector says a $1,000 reward is being offered for information leading to an arrest and conviction.

“Even if you’re taking a small thing off of somebody else’s porch or a small item out of somebody else’s mail, it’s still somebody else’s property,” postal inspector John Wiegand explained. "It’s not yours, it’s not yours to take. So, our main message is: Knock it off.”

The list of potential charges is long and most of them are on a federal level, including stealing a federal vehicle and theft of federal property. The postal inspector says the man and his getaway driver could face significant jail time.

“Don’t do it in our neighborhood. We’re a nice neighborhood,” Campbell said. “We’ve got people, we’ve got eyes. You just got by us this one time.”

Postal inspectors are looking for additional witnesses and surveillance video.