Overnight Friday, Katy Park Baptist Church, 901 W. 24th St., was broken into. An alert from the church’s Ring camera alerted youth pastor Ryan Stone and church secretary Kristen Stone, who drove to the scene after calling the police.
“We've discovered two items that were missing, there may be more,” Richard DeFord, Associate Minister, said. “The first one is the safe out of our church office, which he worked considerably hard to get out of the building. We have them on camera moving the safe out of the building and you can hear him in the parking lot drop it off his dolly, so yeah, it was a challenge for him.”
At least two masked men were seen on camera hauling the church safe to a waiting vehicle. A third suspect may have been caught on microphone in what appears to be a coordinated burglary.
After lugging the heavy safe out of the building, the thieves probably faced disappointment at their haul.
“There wasn't anything in it,” DeFord said. “There were two checks that have been donated that week to the church, but he can't cash those checks so there wasn't any cash, then the other thing was our live-stream device that we used to take our church live each Sunday morning.”
Katy Park Baptist was the second church in the area burglarized in just 24 hours.
“I know that there have been some additional church break-ins, it's not just ours,” DeFord said. “Liberty Life Center was broken into Thursday night.”
Liberty Life Center was broken into Thursday overnight by at least one thief who parked away from surveillance camera view.
“They seemed like they knew where the cameras were,” senior pastor Gary Smith said. “They walked around the perimeter and we did get one pretty good shot of them. They had a mask on except for their eyes. They had glasses on. They had to go by that camera to get to the power and the power was shut off at that point. They broke in a side door, and we had a couple of locked rooms, one was the treasurer's office, which that's where they found the cash.”
Workmen found the damaged door the next morning. No equipment was stolen at Liberty Life Center, just cash.
“I think the only thing that was actually stolen was there was a small offering that was left from Wednesday night service that we kept there. It hasn't been turned in yet so it's about $100,” Smith said.
At Katy Park Baptist Church, the concern is for those who committed the senseless crime.
“We absolutely prayed in our service Sunday morning for them that the Lord would open their eyes,” DeFord said. “Every person is a value to God whether they have a past that society would deem as bad or whether they don't, every person is a value in God. We just hope that they see that, and they come to repentance.”
DeFord also offers the thieves this food for thought.
“It's certainly not stealing from us, they’re stealing from God himself,” DeFord said. “I wouldn't want to be that person, I'm just hoping that after the effort that he put into doing this that maybe there will be some conviction on their own part that they've done all this work that could have been spent a whole lot more constructively.”
Smith mourns the loss of respect for the church.
“The idea of the church or Christianity is not the same value as it was 30, 40, 50 years ago,” Smith said. “To many, it's just another place to get something, just another building. There's probably not the connection with a place of respect or sacredness or honor, so a lot of that's been lost in our society.”
