Thieves break into bank vault through roof, steal money, heirlooms, victim says

CONROE, Texas – Police and the FBI are investigating a burglary at a bank after someone broke into a vault in the middle of the night last weekend, according to Woodforest National Bank.

The break-in happened Sunday at 3101 W. Davis St. and one of the victims believes whoever broke into the vault went through the roof.

The bank said in a statement they’ve had 24-hour security at the branch since the burglary and will continue to do so until they know what exactly happened.

“It is extremely unfortunate that this occurred, and the bank is doing all we can to resolve the situation for our customers,” Woodforest National Bank said in a statement.

The bank and authorities are not providing many details since it remains an active investigation, but one of the victims said she believes the suspect was very familiar with the building.

Sally, who asked us not to use her real identity, said she lost thousands of dollars and family heirlooms.

“It’s something out of a movie.You don’t hear about that here; I know I haven’t heard of anything happening like that ever,” Sally said.

She said Tuesday afternoon she received a phone call from a representative who told her the bank had been broken into.

“They said, ‘Your safety deposit box might have been tampered with.'”

She went to the bank and learned one of her boxes had indeed been broken into and there were some items scattered all over the floor with other people’s items.

“They say there was so much on the floor that they don’t know if it belonged to me or other people; we all had to write statements,” Sally said.

Because she had to try to retrieve some of her items, she got an inside look of what the vault looked like and saw where the thief or thieves possibly came in from.

“You could see the hole in the vault roof, it was (a) perfect cut,” said said. “Wires were all over the place, you could see everything had been cut, missing ceiling tiles.”

She was able to retrieve some items like coins her parents gave her before they died, along with some jewelry, but a lot of her grandparents’ rings and jewelry are irreplaceable.

As for the money taken, Sally planned on using that money for a rainy day.

“Financially, it was set up as my child’s college fund, I mean God forbid something happen to me in the near future and I had to take care of my child, there was financial stability,” Sally said.

“This was not an overnight job, there’s no way.” The thief was “somebody that either worked for the bank or had been here previously or somebody that built the bank.”

Copyright 2018 by KPRC Click2Houston – All rights reserved.

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