LAKE MARY, Fla. – Multiple packages were stolen from locked community mail boxes in a Lake Mary neighborhood, according to the Seminole County Sheriff's Office.
A deputy was patrolling the neighborhood around 2 p.m. Monday when he found a package that had been ripped open, emptied and then discarded on Markham Woods Road. The packaging slip was nearby so the deputy went to the listed address, which was about a mile away.
The resident told the deputy that she was expecting a package but had not received it. She confirmed that the open package the deputy found was the same one she had been expecting.
It should have contained two angel candles worth $80 each and four snowflake ornaments valued at $460, according to the incident report. The woman told the deputy that whenever a package is too big to fit in the normal mailbox, the mail carrier will put the package in a larger locked box and then put that key in the usual mailbox.
The No. 1 lockbox where the package should have been had been pried open, the deputy found.
Right around the same time on Monday, a deputy responded to another house in the neighborhood following a report of a stolen package.
The man had a key in his mailbox that afternoon indicating he had a package in lockbox No. 3, but that lockbox was standing open and his package wasn't inside, the incident report said. The man was expecting a Kindle Fire worth $33.
The deputy noted that the lockbox was dented and scratched as if someone had used a pry rod to open it.
The man told the deputy that a woman driving a BMW approached the mailbox area while he was looking for his package and gave him a torn box she found on Markham Woods Road.
That box had the address of another local woman on it and when the deputy arrived at her door she told him that she had already spoken to a deputy about her package, which contained a mug, being stolen from lockbox No. 4. The deputy did not observe any signs of forced entry on that lockbox.
The Sheriff's Office hasn't identified any suspects and they have no video of the incidents. Two of the three victims plan to prosecute.