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• Family Loses Nearly Everything in Home Burglary

September 11, 2007 (Hobart, IN) – Thieves cleaned out the rented home of a family forced to move by a sewer problem, stealing everything from plasma televisions to the urns and ashes of two relatives.

Livingston St. James found the doors to her home locked and nearly everything missing when she returned Sunday to check on it. St. James had lived there with her daughter, Arnetta Abdulla, and Abdulla's six children.

"I unlocked the door and opened it, and everything was gone," she said. "They took the whole house. They took (the ashes of) my mother and my brother. They must have liked the gold urns."

Two plasma television sets, a refrigerator, beds, dressers, a couch, the washer and dryer, a computer, compact discs and DVDs also were missing. Someone took picture frames but removed the family pictures first and left those behind along with some clothing and an ironing board.

The thief then locked the doors to the home in the city just south of Gary.

The family had no renters' insurance.

"You take everything? Including picture frames and urns?" Abdulla said. "It just hurts. There's no way to recover, unless (the police) recover everything."

Hobart police Detective Jeff White said witnesses saw a man back up a red pickup truck to the house Thursday and begin to load it. Neighbors assumed Abdulla's family was moving out.

White said investigators would try to locate the man, who might have been doing maintenance work in the home.

-The Associated Press