A Lengthy Island man was surprised Wednesday afternoon when he arrived residence to search out his Sea-Doo private watercraft gone. At first, Chris Montalbano thought possibly it was a prank.
“I was kind of baffled for a moment, like my son was pulling a joke on me,” the 28-year-old Amityville man stated.
“It was right here on the trailer,” Montalbano stated, pointing to the now-empty spot the place his 2022 watercraft used to sit down.
However a fast test of his residence safety cameras revealed surprising footage: a silver pickup truck pulled as much as his home round 12:30 p.m., a person obtained out, hitched the jet ski trailer to his car, and drove off — all in broad daylight.
“I’m pretty shocked, especially during the day,” Montalbano stated. “I can’t believe at 12:30 p.m. in the middle of the day they’d be so brazen to just pull up and do it.”
Including to the frustration, two of Montalbano’s safety cameras — one dealing with the driveway and one other close to the door — failed to completely seize the incident.
“You see the jet ski and then it skips for three minutes and then you see nothing,” he defined. “That’s strange. I go to the Ring at the door, same thing.”
He now suspects the thief might have by some means tampered along with his surveillance system.
“If I pull into the driveway, it picks me up. It picks my mailman up. It picks everyone up,” he stated. “So how could it miss this?”
Fortuitously, one safety digicam did seize sufficient to indicate the suspect’s car, and Montalbano hopes somebody acknowledges the truck or the thief.
“I think they were definitely staking it out,” he stated. “He pulled up with a hitch. The ball on that hitch has to be a certain size.”
This is not the primary time jet ski thefts have been reported on Lengthy Island. In February 2024, a string of thefts involving a U-Haul truck have been reported in close by Massapequa. Montalbano worries it could possibly be half of a bigger development.
His jet ski, valued at $25,000, was saved in his storage in the course of the low season. He had not too long ago moved it outdoors — and even purchased a lock for the trailer.
“The crazy thing is, I usually keep it in storage,” he stated. “However I had simply introduced it out as a result of I used to be going to take it out this weekend.
As for what he’d say to the thief? Montalbano laughed, then shook his head. “I don’t know if I could say on camera what I would say to him.”
Anybody with details about the theft is urged to contact native authorities.
