Burglar robs nuns asleep at Holy Family
Sneaking into bedrooms, he took cash and personal items. Police have his image from outside security cameras.
A burglar broke into the nuns' residence at Holy Family University yesterday, taking money from an office and personal items from the nuns after he tiptoed into their rooms while they slept, police said.
The man, who was captured on surveillance tape, pried open the door of Delaney Hall on the Northeast Philadelphia campus about 4 a.m.
He took $130, pocketbooks, a laptop computer, and personal religious items, including a silver cross that a 94-year-old nun had received as a gift when she took her vows 75 years ago.
"This is particularly disturbing that a guy would victimize a convent full of nuns," said Lt. Rick Sysol of Northeast Detectives. "If he's willing to do this, Lord knows what he would do elsewhere."
Surveillance cameras outside the residence captured the man driving up in a van and then entering the building, which is the home of 19 nuns who teach at the university and at Nazareth Academy.
The burglar was described as a light-skinned man of medium height wearing jeans with a black shirt under a gray zip-up sweatshirt. The van was a dirty, older, passenger model.
After breaking in and taking money from the office, the burglar crept upstairs to four rooms, opened the bedroom doors, and took personal items.
When he entered the fourth room, the resident, believed to be the 94-year-old nun, awoke and asked who he was and what he was doing, Sysol said. The man flashed a flashlight and told the nun that he was with security and was checking to see if everything was OK. He then left the building.
The nun immediately called her mother superior.
"Once the public gets word of this incident, if [the burglar] is recognizable to anyone, it would be advisable for him to turn himself in," Sysol said, "because he might get a worse punishment from the public."