Police catch real life Grinch

If you’ve ever wondered if home surveillance video cameras work, well here’s a story to prove that they do. In less than 24 hours a family notices that their holiday presents, that were supposed to be delivered, were actually stolen. Holts Summit police say with the help of social media and people sharing the video on Facebook, the suspect was quickly caught.

“it is a type of crime that pulls on peoples emotions, we’re talking about the Grinch here, who literally stole Christmas from little kids”, says Sergeant Marc Haycook with the Holts Summit Police Department.

It all started when Breanna Dunnavant got home from work on Tuesday.

“My husband was playing on our surveillance video, just for the neighborhood, he was looking at something else that was going on and he happened to notice that UPS dropped off a package around 12:30pm and as he was scrolling through our footage he noticed a car pulled up into our driveway, took the package and left”, says home owner and victim Breanna Dunnavant.

The camera was a gift the family got for christmas a few years ago, but little did they know it would actually help them solve a Christmas mystery.

Sgt. Haycook says, “the victim shared the video on social media and that video went viral, I personally shared it on my Facebook page, the other officers shared it on their Facebook pages and the next thing you know it has 50 share, a 100 shares, then a 1,000 shares and that’s what happened in this instance”.

Sergeant Haycook says the video being shared, is how they caught their suspect.

“It got shared so much, so quickly that persons familiar with the suspect said, oh I know who that is, they called us, we got the information, the suspect was not in our jurisdiction, we were told where he was at, we called up another jurisdiction, they went and made contact with the suspect and case closed”, says Sgt. Haycook.

Sources tell us the suspect is 43 year old John Jaegers of Jefferson City. He has reportedly confessed to multiple thefts in Jefferson City, Holts Summit and Callaway county.

“It just makes you feel violated because you think you’re in a safe neighborhood and then something like this happens and had we not seen it just because he had been looking at the footage, the guy may never have been caught”, says Dunnavant.

Although sources have told us the suspect is John Jaegers, Holts Summit Police say they do not release the names of the suspects, until they has been formerly changed by the prosecuting attorney.