Glendale woman shames would-be thieves into returning stolen package
Shannon Brandon just wanted to celebrate her son’s completion of his college finals last week with a nice breakfast at their Glendale home, but a group of would-be package thieves threw a wrench into her plans.
Brandon, who works at Keller Williams Realty in Burbank, was ready to dig into the meal on Dec. 18 when she spotted a suspicious-looking vehicle parked across the street from her home in the 1900 block of West Mountain Street. She initially shrugged it off, thinking there was a family inside, but two men soon exited the vehicle and began walking down the street in opposite directions from each other.
Each man was wearing gloves and jackets with the hoods pulled up over their heads. One of them quickly went up to the front of a neighbor’s home and plucked a package from the porch.
“I was so mad when I saw that,” Brandon said. “It was probably Christmas presents, and these thugs were just going to steal it, so I just started yelling.”
In a cellphone video filmed by her son, Derek, she can be heard yelling across the street at one of the men to stop and return the package. He pauses for a moment before walking back to the home and returns the box while she shouts at him, “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“That surprised me the most, that he actually walked it back to the porch,” Shannon Brandon said. “At least his mom taught him something right.”
While she admits that she “sounded like a crazy woman” in the video, Shannon Brandon said that, in the moment, the thought of the thieves ruining the holidays for her neighbors made her blood boil so much she didn’t care.
“My son said he’d never heard me yell like that before, and I told him he’s never done anything to make me that mad,” she said.
After being confronted, the two men quickly returned to their vehicle and fled from the neighborhood.
Although she’s lived in Glendale for only two years, Shannon Brandon said she hasn’t experienced any package thefts at her home and neither have her neighbors who have been around longer — at least until that day.
Since the confrontation, she said if she’s getting any important packages, they’ll be sent to her office instead.