A thief jumped out of a moving Honda on Friday to smash the rear window of a Prius just as it was getting on the I-80 onramp on Bryant Street, and made off with a backpack containing a drone and camera equipment.
It was an impressive variety of smash-and-grab in a way, and seems to have been a pretty targeted one — how did the thieves know that the backpack in the hatchback of the Prius had expensive stuff in it? But the video made the rounds on Twitter and subsequently Reddit, showing a black Honda Civic or Accord approach the Prius as it reaches the onramp near 8th and Bryant. The Honda pulls up close once, and then twice, while both cars are in stop-and-go traffic, and a suspect in a hoodie jumps out of the backseat of the Honda, smashes the rear glass of the Prius, snatches the backpack, jumps back into the Honda, and it speeds off as two men who were in the Prius jump out to see what just happened.
A Tesla driver caught the whole thing on video, though, and you can pretty clearly see the license plate of the Honda — 8SIY826, I believe. So that should help with the investigation.
Highway robbery in SF- caught on my TeslaCam. pic.twitter.com/oZ8RFgboCm
— Alex (@amegregan5) February 6, 2021
The Chronicle reported on the backpack's expensive contents, via the SFPD, and noted how local private detective Jack Palladino died earlier this week following an attempted robbery last week that involved an expensive camera. Images from the camera helped police to identify the suspects involved.
Did these thieves follow the guys after seeing them playing with the drone and camera[s], perhaps? Was this just random and some desperate thieves went to this trouble to steal a backpack that could have just been filled with granola bars? Perhaps the cops will figure this out.