Grant Park break-in caught on video

By MARCUS K. GARNER

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A vigilant Grant Park couple posted video footage on YouTube of a robbing crew breaking into their home, throwing furniture at their dog, and making off with a laptop computer.

This was the second time in 10 months that a break-in at Dan and Alyssa Kopp’s bungalow was captured by surveillance video.

And just as with the October 2008 burglary, the couple took the footage to police and put the images up on the popular online video-sharing Web site.

This time, of course, there were twice as many cameras rolling.

“The last time, our things were recovered within a week,” Alyssa Kopp said on Sunday. “Someone called police with a tip that said, ‘I am watching the people I saw on YouTube unloading a TV at a home.’”

Those thieves from October were caught, and Kopp is hoping the same will happen to the four men who kicked in her door on Friday afternoon.

“The reason my husband installed cameras in the house in the first place, is because we live in a high-crime area,” she said.

Just after 5 p.m. Friday, surveillance videos from the Kopps’ home showed a black Nissan Armada pull up to the house.

A young man in green shorts and a green t-shirt walked up to the front door, rang the doorbell several times, then went back to the truck.

A second young man in jeans and a white t-shirt follows and checks the door, before returning to the truck.

The SUV pulls to a corner of the block, and a crew of four emerge, jump the fence and run up to a back door.

A third individual with a bandana, white T-shirt and jeans, kicks the door twice — stopping intermittently to pull up his sagging jeans — and the crew enter the house.

Inside, video shows a fourth male in a dark t-shirt and jeans lob a bar stool at the Kopps’ dog as the crew spread out through the house, apparently in search of a robbery booty.

Within seconds, the four quickly file past the hidden camera with just a laptop computer, and exit the house.

“Ironically, [it] was the same laptop that was stolen last year,” Kopp said. “We had a flat screen last year. But we never replaced it because we didn’t want to be targeted.”

Atlanta police are investigating the theft.

But Kopp said the last group of thieves are just now being prosecuted.

“It’s doubly frustrating knowing how not cut-and-dry the first case is going through the court system,” she said. “So even if these guys are caught, it’s just the beginning.”

But why was the Kopp home targeted again, especially after shedding the lightweight flat-screen TV?

“That’s the million-dollar question,” Kopp said. “We have a fence, a dog, surveillance cameras and a security system.

“But I guess there’s always so much more you can do.”