HOUSTON — The Harris County Sheriff’s Office is looking for a thief who deputies said preyed on a woman while she was visiting her mother’s grave at a northeast Harris County cemetery.
“I’d been having a couple of rough days and a girl just needs her mama sometimes,” Crystal Miller said.
For the past 13 years, Miller has been coming to the Brookside Funeral Home and Memorial Park in northeast Harris County to visit her mom.
“Just sit and listen to the music that she liked and talk to her,” Miller said.
This week, something happened as she was at the foot of her mother’s grave that Miller said she won’t be able to forget anytime soon.
“I looked at my Tahoe and this guy has his whole upper torso in my vehicle, grabbed my purse and he lifted up the center console and was about to dig through there, and I said, ‘Hey, what’re you doing?’” Miller said.
Miller said the man took her purse, jumped into a black car then took off. She has pictures of what he did to her vehicle --broken glass from her window is still on the asphalt at the cemetery.
“I had $700, several of my credit cards, he did use my credit cards, my AirPods,” Miller said.
Soon after her purse was stolen, Miller said she got a call from the Target in the Heights. She was told the suspect was trying to charge hundreds of dollars to one of her credit cards.
“I know everybody says it can’t happen to me but, well, it can happen to you,” Miller said. “And it does happen.”
After she posted what happened on social media, Miller said she was contacted by a woman who said the same thing happened to her, but at a church near Cloverleaf. Although it hasn’t been confirmed by the sheriff’s office, the woman and Miller believe the suspect in both cases is the same man.
Miller said the man who took the woman’s purse outside of the church later showed up at the woman’s house that night, after getting her address. Miller is worried the same thing could happen to her.
“I don’t feel safe coming out here anymore,” Miller said. “That’s something I’ve done since my mama passed.”
Now, she's spreading the word to other families who come to the cemetery.
“I had to tell (a cemetery visitor), ‘Don’t come out here by yourself,’ because it takes your sense of peace away," she said.
Miller said she canceled all of her cards, and now, she wants help getting the suspect caught.
“I think that he needs to go to prison,” Miller said. “He took something from me that I can’t get back. My sense of security.”
If you have any information on the theft you are asked to call the Harris County Sheriff’s Office.