HOUSTON – A Houston-area woman has a warning for anyone who goes shopping and thinks their belongings are safe just because they make it out of the parking lot.
Still too shaken to reveal her identity, she was followed by a group of thieves 38 miles to her home where she was robbed.
"It really freaked me out," she recalls. "Home is supposed to be your safe haven and it's not."
Last Thursday, she left The Galleria after a day of shopping. Nearly 45 minutes later, as she pulls into her driveway, surveillance video shows a gray, four-door sedan following right behind.
After the woman pauses in her driveway and pulls into her garage, the car passes by in the other direction.
A side camera shows the moment the driver parks and two thieves jump out. Before the woman can close her garage, one crook stands by as the other runs in and smashes her back window, then runs away with two high-end purses.
"He just hurry up and just broke my back windshield on my SUV," she says. "That's what he did."
The cameras also show the car take off and the woman and her husband giving chase, but it was too late.
She now provides this advice for other shoppers.
"You're thinking that leaving the parking lot you're safe and apparently you're not," she said. "These individuals will come after you, wherever they have to go because you have something they want."
The couple believes there was a total of four people in the car that followed them. They say the car was a gray, four-door Toyota Camry but they couldn't get a license plate number because the car didn't have a plate attached.