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Porch pirate strikes Indy man's house

Posted at 11:20 PM, Nov 03, 2019
and last updated 2019-11-03 23:20:39-05

INDIANAPOLIS — Ryan Ours said he doesn't have packages delivered to his porch, but he figured a smaller item would be all right.

"My doorbell camera alerted me that I had something dropped off," Ours said. "It was a razor blade I bought online."

A few hours after delivery, Ours got another doorbell notification.

"I saw that somebody else came to the front door. I thought that was a little odd," Ours said.

Ours was on his way home on the northwest side of Indianapolis and decided to check the video feed on his phone.

"Sure enough, it was this guy that just decided he was gonna come up to my front porch, wait for a second and when he didn't hear anything he decided to just take off with the package," he said.

Ours reported the crime to police.

"It made me upset," he said. "I was frustrated that somebody just decided they could walk up on somebody's front porch and take someone else's things. Not very cool."

Ours shared the video on a neighborhood social media app, and now he is taking new steps to make sure no one takes a package off his front step again. He recently installed a new garage door.

"They actually have a partnership now with Amazon for in-garage delivery, so I think that's something that I will probably set up going forward so that way they can just deliver the package right into the garage and then close it when they leave," Ours said.

The Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department has shared tips with RTV6 in the past to protect your orders. They said you can ask to sign for a package on delivery, buy insurance for expensive items, have packages delivered to work, track your package online, have a trusted neighbor pick it up and have the Post Office hold packages when you go out of town.

"I just want to let everybody else in the neighborhood know that somebody was out prowling around and taking people's packages," Ours said. "I don't want it to happen to anybody else."