Burglar caught on camera at power company

FRESNO, Calif.

The burglar spent just 19 seconds in this office, and these first five are the most important.

Pretty quickly, he seems to realize he might be on camera.

"Towards the end of the video as he's walking out, he covers himself up, but a little too late," said Fresno County sheriff's deputy Chris Curtice.

Sheriff's investigators are hoping this surveillance footage will lead them to the man who broke a window and got into this Shaver Lake building two months ago.

The Southern California Edison offices are a little bit off the beaten path here where the snow drifts are up to about four feet right now, so not a lot of people would've seen the suspect go in. But those surveillances cameras did.

And the power company may not be his only victim.

A few miles away, in the gated Ridgetop community, five vacation homes got hit while the owners were away.

"It was just a spree of burglaries, said neighbor Eric MacIntyre. "There was a car taken out of one house, washer & dryers, log splitters, TVs, I guess."

MacIntyre says some of the community's residents have tried to identify and chase the suspects, but all they discovered is that the crook was driving a dark ford truck.

Sheriff's investigators are looking for a possible connection.

"I don't know if he's responsible for some of the other ones, but it'd be nice to identify him and see where this goes," said Curtice.

The man got away with two laptop computers during the burglary caught on camera.

Deputies tell Action News the computers contained a lot of information, but So-Cal Edison hasn't returned our calls to specify whether customers' personal information was compromised.

Deputies hope to stop any potential identity theft by learning the burglar's identity and these five seconds of video could be the key.

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