Bizarre vehicle thefts put an Arlington neighborhood on alert

What do they use to open the vehicles without triggering the alarms? Also, the surveillance cameras had trouble recording during the heist.

Arlington Police are investigating the theft of two vehicles that their owners say was a very strange crime carried out with precision and caution.

According to the owners of both vehicles, a Toyota and a Lexus, the alarms never went off, the thieves managed to start the cars quickly, and the home security cameras didn’t work during the theft. They simply recorded static, as if something affected them externally during the break-in. Surveillance cameras captured only the moment people approached and left the area.

Justin Brigham told Telemundo 39 that when he woke up in his Wimbledon home on Sept. 17, he thought his son had already left when he looked out and didn’t see his Lexus. But then he realized his son was still asleep and the car keys were on his nightstand.

Neighbors started alerting one another and tried to check their cameras, which they reported had stopped working at the time of the crime. Soon after, they realized another vehicle belonging to a different neighbor had also been stolen.

Gary Williamson, a neighbor of the Brighams, said he was in possession of his late son's truck and that he'd planned to give it to his grandson. He told Telemundo 39 he noticed the truck was gone when he went to take out the trash.

As the neighbors began to share information, they learned that several of their camera systems had recording failures for a five-minute period, and they estimate that was when the vehicles were stolen.

Since they didn’t find broken glass, hear anything, and didn’t find any other damage, they suspect the thieves used a high-tech method to unlock the vehicles, start them, and cause the cameras to malfunction.

Arlington Police have been investigating the theft but told Telemundo 39 they have not been able to determine how the vehicles were stolen so easily or how all the surveillance cameras failed.

In a message sent to Telemundo 39 and NBC 5, Erica Brighman, the college student’s mother, said several neighbors have done their own digging and found that other thefts have happened in the same way in nearby neighborhoods. But police have not confirmed that.

"For both of them, what was taken meant more than transportation," Erica Brigham wrote. "Two vehicles were stolen from our Wimbledon neighborhood in Arlington on the same night. One belonged to my college son. The other was driven by the grandson of our neighbor Gary, an 80-plus-year-old Navy veteran who has lived in this neighborhood for decades. The crazy part is that Gary didn't even know the truck at his own house had been stolen. He was helping us look for my son's car."