Woman visiting Albuquerque frustrated following car break-in

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – Colleen Clark wasn’t visiting Albuquerque for the best of reasons. She was here for her cousin’s funeral and she didn’t receive the best welcome here, either.

“We got to the funeral memorial and I shut the door and I look windows aren’t working, the doors aren’t locking and I’m like ‘Oh my god we got hit last night,’” Clark said. She’s visiting from Pueblo, Colorado.

Turns out, overnight, someone had drilled out the lock on her car’s driver door as it was parked at the hotel where she was staying. Most of the damage is inside and it’s effecting both doors.

“It’s all the electronics on the inside, it looks like a simple but it’s not cause it went into the electronics, I can’t lock it, I can’t roll up the windows, it’s a mess,” Clark said.

But the thieves didn’t stop at the door, they also broke her license plate cover trying to take the tags. Looking at her disheveled plate that reads “Disabled Veteran,” Clark is disheartened by the vandalism.

“You serve your country and you come back to a place within the country you serve and no respect, it’s heartbreaking,” Clark said.

But her issues didn’t end in the parking lot. Clark only had more problems when she tried to report the break in to police.

“Ohh geeze, the whole process, they kept repeating, ‘Don’t hang up, don’t hang up,’” Clark sighed with frustration as she explained the phone call. “I’m trying to get a hold of police for 40 minutes, on hold, I called my husband he called the hotel they were no help, they said ‘We can’t do nothing for you,’ It was a total fiasco.”

It made her wonder if there were any police in the city.

“We have been here going on 72 hours, have not seen one police officer and that’s kind of odd for a large city you’d at least see one passing by or something.”

She even tried calling the mayor to voice her frustration.

“Did you know, you can’t get a hold of your mayor through the mayor’s office? So I called and it just kept saying this is the mayor’s office but I couldn’t even leave a message or talk with a person,” Clark said.

Now, while Clark mourns the cousin she lost, she said this experience with our crime crisis has made her even more concerned about the family she’s leaving behind in Albuquerque.

“I’m heartbroken for all my cousins who live here, I want to take them back to Colorado with me,” Clark said.