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NORTH SALT LAKE — A couple is hoping somebody recognizes two men caught in home surveillance images taken during a burglary, so police can find them and recover the property they stole from the couple’s house last month.
Matt and Lindsey Tirmenstein first shared the images on photo and GIF-sharing site imgur.com, but after over 287,000 views and nearly 500 comments as of Friday night, the couple has still not received any leads.
The sequence of images shows two men pulling up in a white Pontiac Bonneville with an Idaho license plate, entering the home and then leaving with several items and a full backpack.
“I was just angry that these two men thought they could come and take things that we have worked so hard for like it was their own,” Lindsey Tirmenstein said.
She came home before 10 a.m. on Sept. 23 to discover the burglary, she said.
“I looked down the hallway into our master bedroom and saw that all of my drawers — my dresser drawers — were overturned and everything was scattered,” Lindsey Tirmenstein said. “It made me feel just violated.”
Matt Tirmenstein said that the burglars got away with a laptop, a LeapPad, headphones, and — perhaps most importantly — a jewelry box that contained a valuable locket first owned by his great-great-great-grandmother.
I was really, really, really angry watching it. I can't tell you how many times I've watched this thing, just trying to figure out who these guys are and what I'm going to do when I see them.
–Matt Tirmenstein
“It’s a gold locket with rubies in the eyes of the lion and a diamond in its mouth,” Matt Tirmenstein described. “It actually had a rose petal inside of it that was given to her husband.”
Tirmenstein said he was perplexed by what the burglars chose not to take. He said they left several guns in the house untouched and left behind an Xbox game system while stealing the controller.
“I was really, really, really angry watching it,” Matt Tirmenstein said of the surveillance image sequence. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched this thing, just trying to figure out who these guys are and what I’m going to do when I see them.”
Tirmenstein said he wasn’t sure why the burglars picked his house — except that it is in the middle of several homes that are vacant during the day because the people who live in them work.
North Salt Lake police detective Rob Gwynn said the Tirmenstein's home was the only one in the area that was hit.
Gwynn said investigators tried to enhance the surveillance images to lift a number off of the license plate, but that attempt was unsuccessful.
Tirmenstein said his surveillance cameras, through the iCam app, actually streamed the video live to his phone and triggered an alarm when the burglars moved into the picture.
“I was at a meeting, I heard it going off and I was like meh,” he said.
He said he wished he would have paid attention to the alarm.
Matt Tirmenstein has since gone back through surveillance images recorded up to three days before the burglary, and none seemed to show the burglars’ vehicle in the area.
He said he planned to install higher-grade cameras, including one potentially with night vision, just in case burglars strike again.
Gwynn said anyone with information about the crime is asked to call North Salt Lake police at 801-335-8655.
