Thief rings doorbell first before ransacking River Oaks home

HOUSTON – A front-porch camera captured the beginning to a robbery in River Oaks.

The video, recorded from the front porch of a home in River Oaks, showed a man looking into a home while the family was away. The man was also seen on video looking right into the camera mounted in the doorbell. He even touched the camera with his glove-covered hands.

“We think discovering that no one was home and therefore, that he had time to get in and steal,” said Charlie Neuhaus. He and his family were at dinner when they had the front-porch visitor. When they came home, they found a broken window and their backdoor was splintered. Neuhaus added, "I think here this is where he ultimately got into the house and ultimately left. Somehow came up and ripped it open. We had the deadbolt on."

Inside, they said they found the master bedroom ransacked. The bed was flipped over with purses and jewelry missing. Neuhaus said he wished he had heard the alert sent to his phone from the doorbell called “Ring." It allows the homeowner to see and talk directly to the guest from anywhere. He said, "I would have been able to talk to him through the device and then he would have thought someone was home or someone was on their way home and hopefully avoided the incident."

Neuhaus hopes someone recognizes the man in the video and calls police. He wants to know what happened at his house in the moments after the front-door video.