AK-toting car burglar has NW Bexar County neighborhood uneasy

Bexar County – Two days after the Uvalde shooting, video of a what appears to be a teenage car burglar with an AK-style rifle has neighbors in a Northwest Bexar County neighborhood feeling uneasy.

Security video recorded at about 3:44 a.m. Thursday morning on Shaenfield Court, a small cul-de-sac near Shaenfield Road and Loop 1604, shows two people going from driveway to driveway, apparently trying to find unlocked cars. Two vehicles can be seen in the background, a pickup truck and a minivan.

The Bexar County Sheriff’s Office says the two on foot appear to be juveniles. The one closest to the security camera can be seen carrying what looks like an AK-style rifle as he checks the door of a parked car.

Steve Cantu, whose camera recorded the scene, is a Marine Corps combat veteran and familiar with the Kalashnikov’s distinctive design and banana-shaped magazine. He’s glad he didn’t wake up and end up confronting the burglars.

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“I mean, he’s not experienced. You could clearly tell he’s like really young,” Cantu said of the person seen in his driveway. “You know, he would have, you know, just probably pulled the trigger at the drop of a dime. So, I mean, yeah, I would have probably gotten hurt.”

A BCSO deputy told KSAT the same crew appears to have tried its luck on several blocks in the area, getting into at least three vehicles.

One of them was Cantu’s neighbor, Sarah Zapata, who said Cantu woke her and her husband up Thursday morning to let her know their SUV had been ransacked.

Zapata found the passenger door open, and everything from the center console and glove compartment strewn in and around her car. Though she said they had hit the button to lock the vehicle the night before, one of the doors may have been ajar.

Zapata doesn’t believe anything was stolen – not keeping anything valuable inside the vehicle – but she still feels violated, and the video evidence of one of the suspected thieves holding an assault rifle only adds to her unease.

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“My sense of safety is somewhat eroded,” Zapata said. “I mean, we’re all, I think, a little bit on edge after the events in Uvalde the other day. And this is just yet another thing that it’s like, ‘why?’”

Another neighbor, Shanelle Gary, said it was “terrifying” to see the rifle in the video, saying she “could throw a rock” to Ward Elementary School and Jefferson Middle School, across Shaenfield Road. Gary said she doesn’t feel safe in her home either.

“If that is an assault rifle with our – most of us having bedrooms facing the inside of the street…I mean, it’s very realistic that they could just start shooting and we wouldn’t even know that it happened,” Gary said.

A BCSO spokeswoman told KSAT Thursday afternoon the investigation was ongoing, and they did not have anyone in custody yet, or positive identification.