Two Guns Vanish in Common Car Break-In

If you can, suppose for a moment you are a common thief – your MO, breaking into cars for whatever you might find that you can sell on the street.

You spot a backpack in plain view, on the floor of a vehicle parked in an out-of-the-way corner of a supermarket parking lot. Could have a wallet with credit cards in it. Could have an iPod, iPhone or iPad. Or maybe just some worthless books and papers. It's a crapshoot.

Imagine the thrill when you find you've just picked up a couple thousand bucks worth of street heat – two high-quality handguns, one light and right for tight situations, the other a heavy hitter, and a vintage one at that.

At 9:26 a.m. Wednesday, a 22-year-old Brookfield man reported that between 8 and 10 a.m., while he was at work at the Pick ‘n Save at 1717 N. Mayfair Rd., someone broke into his Jeep Liberty and stole his backpack.

It contained two semiautomatic handguns. He said he intended to go to a shooting range after work and had left the backpack on the floor in front of the driver’s seat.

When he went out to get something at 10, he found the driver’s window smashed and the backpack gone, along with the weapons, plus ammo and extra magazines.

Video showed a white, full-size sedan pull in next to the victim’s just before 9:30, and then a subject moving back and forth between them. The camera angle can't show just what he's doing.

Then the car backs out, turns around and backs into the same space.

Again, someone gets out, and his head can be seen bobbing back and forth between the cars for a minute before leaving in the white sedan. The quality of the video can't provide any more useful description of the subject or of the car.

The victim is missing a Sig Sauer Mosquito .22-cal. semiautomatic and an original WWII Radom P35 9mm semiautomatic – a Polish-designed weapon adopted by the German Wehrmacht after they overran its factories.

The owner was able to provide the serial number for the .22 but not for the 9mm.

Wauwatosa police have no worthwhile evidence in the incident.