Caught on Tape: El Paso Grinches on the Loose

Two grinches are on the loose in East El Paso.

They aren’t stealing Christmas this year but they are taking holiday spirit.

Victor Avila says when he woke up on Sunday morning and walked outside, he couldn’t believe his eyes.

Someone had stolen some of his blow-up Christmas decorations from his front yard. The father had spent hours earlier in the month assembling the holiday display.

The decorations that were stolen happened to be his four-year-old son’s favorite one, too — “Christmas Mickey.”

Avila happens to have video surveillance equipment set up on the exterior of his home.

He went back inside to his computer to pull up the overnight video recording. The first words out of his mouth were, “Oh, my God.”

The video shows that just before 3:30 a.m. on Sunday a car drives past Avila’s home. It then makes a U-turn and the driver cuts off the lights.

Then the video shows a boy, who appears to be nine to 12-years-old run into the front yard of the home, unplugging some of the blow-up decorations, then running them back to the car.

From another camera angle, it appears and adult woman pops out of the car and begins casing the other side of the front yard.

The two take off after that in a heist that lasts less than 10 minutes. Avila says he lost around $200 in decorations.

He says he most concerned with the idea that an adult would put a child up to participating in such a nefarious act — just before Christmas.