Amid a spate of home burglaries in the San Fernando Valley, an alert neighbor in Burbank foiled a burglary in progress over the weekend when she saw two men dressed in black in someone’s backyard and called police, authorities said.
A neighbor who lives near the 2700 block of Scott Road in Burbank called police around 7:20 p.m. Sunday after she saw two men dressed in black go into someone’s backyard and then crawl through a window into a home, the Burbank Police Department said in a statement Monday. The caller also said they saw a suspicious car parked across the street.
Officers arrived a few minutes later and saw two people running from the home. Officers deployed a helicopter and set up a perimeter to track the suspects, and eventually found them hiding in someone’s backyard. Both were arrested, but not without incident – ​​authorities said one suspect initially refused officers’ commands and was bitten by a K9. A third suspect inside the car, matching the 911 caller’s initial description, was soon arrested.
Alan Rodriguez-Pulido, 34, Wilmer Castelblanco-Robles, 20, and Cristian Rios-Cuadros, 24, were booked into the Los Angeles County Jail on charges of residential burglary.
Just last week, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass announced measures to combat theft in the Valley, including adding extra patrols and using mobile license plate readers in high-risk theft areas. He also used the occasion to plug the budget released last week by his office for the financial year 2026-27.
“We are deploying resources and working strategically to stop this spate of thefts and apprehend the criminals,” Bass said in a statement on April 21. That’s why I’ve worked so hard to reverse the trend of downsizing the LAPD. We need enough officers to act quickly and strategically when patterns of crime emerge. This commitment to police recruitment is reflected in the budget I released today.
Commenting on the recent burglaries, Bass said in a statement that the city busted a burglary ring last year that was responsible for nearly 100 burglaries and the police department is “once again deploying resources to identify, locate and arrest individual thieves and organized gangs.”
So far this year, nearly 43% fewer thefts and burglaries have been reported to the LAPD’s Valley Bureau than the same period last year, according to police department data.
