A house in the 900 block of Battery St. in San Pedro had their artificial lawn stolen overnight. April 12, 2017. (Chuck Bennett/Press-Telegram/SCNG)
A strange thing happened to Alicia Cullen of San Pedro this week.
Someone stole her lawn.
Yep.
Sections of her artificial turf went missing sometime early Wednesday morning.
It was her brother-in-law who first spotted the missing turf that the family believes was taken overnight Tuesday into Wednesday.
“He told me our lawn was missing,” Cullen said. “I said, ‘Are you serious?’ So I walked out and, sure enough, it was gone.”
Left behind in its place was a fresh dirt-scape. Heavy amounts of the sand were strewn partway into the public street, where the grassy treasure appeared to have been loaded into a getaway vehicle.
“They took the whole thing — the sand, the nails that go into the ground. It’s just crazy,” she said. “They probably rolled it up.
“We assume it happened around 2 a.m. (Wednesday). I’d brought the dogs inside that night, otherwise they would have barked.”
A report was made to the Los Angeles Police Department’s Harbor Division and Cullen is still hoping to find surveillance tape from their north San Pedro neighborhood that may have caught the curb-side landscape caper on camera.
Because the entire front lawn is also covered in artificial turf that still remains, Cullen worries that the thieves may be back for more.
“That’s expensive turf,” she said, adding that the missing sections near the curb — “a pretty big hunk” — were estimated to be worth about $1,500. Their homeowners insurance will cover the loss, she said, but they’re weighing their options in calculating the deductible they’d have to pay in making a claim.
They may decide to plant some (real) flowers instead, Cullen said.
The drought-resistant landscape, put in by former owners, was an appealing selling point when they bought the house a couple years ago amid California’s lingering dry spell that had prompted water rationing.
So what will the thieves do with their take — cart it off to a swap meet perhaps?
“My husband is saying they probably plotted this all out and they’re doing somebody’s landscaping,” she said.
