MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, Fla. – Police have arrested four suspects accused of breaking into vehicles in a Westchester neighborhood early Thursday.
Miami-Dade police said Kevin Aleman, 19, Josten Medina, 20, Randy Mejia, 19, and Michael Rucker, 18, each face charges of burglary and grand theft.
Alerted by his security camera system, a Westchester man could see one of the suspects breaking into one of his vehicles. The homeowner yells at the thief, walks outside and intrepidly gets in his pickup truck to follow the fleeing crooks.
The suspects crashed their getaway car into a white Mercedes-Benz parked outside a home near Southwest 87th Avenue and Southwest 32nd Street.
Surveillance video from another home's backyard shows two of the four suspects looking for a place to hide as police were searching for them. One of the suspects is seen crawling under a boat. He moves behind a shed, but it's too small, so he hides inside a bigger shed.
The SWAT team eventually forced him out and took him into custody.
"Had he gotten into the house, the outcome might've been very different," the resident, who asked not to be identified out of concerns for his family's safety, told Local 10 News.
He said his wife usually takes the dog outside at about the time the suspects were snooping around his yard.
“If he had encountered her, God knows what he might’ve done to her,” the resident said.