Landscape Looting Lady on the Loose in Residential Minneapolis Neighborhood

There’s nothing more strange than having your beautifully landscaped yard casually vandalized in the dead of night, except maybe having your landscaped yard casually vandalized by a woman in a sundress.

Earlier this month, a woman dressed in a sundress and sandals sauntered down a quiet southwest Minneapolis street at 3 a.m. on Saturday, August 5th. At first it appeared she was out for a leisurely stroll — until the homeowners surveillance camera caught her ripping his landscaping lights out of his lawn.

Mark Kaplan’s home, located in West Minnehaha Parkway in Minneapolis, caught the culprit calmly ripping up the landscape lights, which are secured via brackets and buried a foot underground. She managed to rip up five lights without a struggle, the sixth and last one resulting in a 15 second battle to unearth the object.

“I expected a couple of teenage guys, frankly,” said Kaplan.

But the teenagers would have run off with their prize. Instead, the unnamed woman simply looked at her accomplishment and slowly walked off, without the lights, as if someone else had done the deed.

The woman managed to sever the wires connecting each landscaping light from the force of ripping them from the ground. Those broken wires would make any landscaping company and homeowner frustrated due to all the time, effort, and money put into the well landscaped yard.

“She just grabbed [the lights] and pulled and pulled and pulled and yanked it out,” Kapland said.

And this is not the first time people’s landscaping has been vandalized in the city. Just last summer, a thief decided plants were the best thing to steal, which a security camera at another property caught an older woman lugging a large planter from a brewery’s porch.

Clearly, everyone wants a great landscape, yet not everyone can afford a professional landscaping company. Professional landscapers can help homeowners achieve a well thought-out, functional, and aesthetic design so they can enjoy every part of their property. For Kaplan, however, he will have to temporarily enjoy a light-less front yard for the time being.

“I think that there’s a consensus that this is a very unusual happening,” Kaplan said.

For now, the looting landscaping lady is on the loose, so secure your plants with plenty of stakes.