SALINE COUNTY, Ark. — Monica Eckhardt woke up to her property gate open and motion notifications on her phone.
One click into the security video revealed her fear.
“My heart just dropped because you feel violated,” Eckhardt said.
A shirtless man was going through her car port starting at 10:30 Sunday night all the way to 6am the next morning.
The family added security cameras recently after their back window of their car was busted out.
“You can see him plain as day just messing with and going through all this stuff,” she said.
For 8 hours he’s seen going through things. The majority of the things was recently taken out of a storage unit to help out a family member.
“Maybe he saw that we had a little extra boxes and stuff out here.”
They say the items are more sentimental than valuable – like a shirt that belonged to a late family member.
When the man finally left, he took about 300 dollars worth of extension cords. The family says he was likely startled by alarms he heard to wake up the family.
“’Cause it was right at 6 where you can see he grabs it real fast and then takes off,” Eckhardt said.
According to the family, the man was then seen walking down a road and was stopped by a Saline County deputy.
“When I called the cops this morning and reported it, we showed him the video, cop said I just saw your cords down the road,” she said.
Fortunately they’ve been returned.
The suspect has been identified by the sheriff’s office as Anderson Whitworth.
He was arrested a week ago for drugs and released.
But for the 8 hours Whitworth spent burglarizing the property, the family hopes he’ll be caught in the same amount of time.
