The suspect tried to get the crew to stop filming and even threatened to call his mom, which Guerrero called the “funniest part.”
Inside Edition reporter Lisa Guerrero said she probably shouldn’t have chased down the man who fell right into the trap of breaking into the crew’s bait car during an investigation, but it's all in her nature.
“A lot of people have asked me … isn't that dangerous?” Guerrero said. “My first instinct as a reporter is always to try to get the story and I'm always wanting to chase the bad guys.”
Guerrero recently pursued a suspected thief into a California train station after he was caught on camera stealing a speaker out of the bait car while the team was reporting on the rise of smash-and-grab thefts in San Francisco.
The team set up multiple cameras in the car, with valuables including the speaker and a purse.
“We were using this speaker as bait and what the thieves don’t know is we're going to be hiding this GPS device inside of it,” Guerrero said.
Once they caught the suspect and an accomplice smashing the car window and grabbing the loot, they used the GPS signal to track them.
"We ended up following a city bus for blocks and blocks," Guerrero said. "And what was our challenge at that point; we didn't know what exit they were going to get off that bus. So every time the bus stopped, every other block, we had to wait and we had to look and see if the kid with the hoodie and his female accomplice were getting off."
The crew eventually caught up with the suspect and confronted him as he was heading underground to catch a train. The man tried to get the crew to stop filming and even threatened to call his mom, which Guerrero called the “funniest part.”
“In the decade of doing Inside Edition investigations, I have never had somebody that I'm chasing threaten me by calling their mother on me," she said. "I have to say, it was shocking."
Guerrero was able to recover the speaker, which the man left behind when he fled, and the stolen purse was later found in a trash can.
But in a weird twist, the Inside Edition crew car, which was filled with equipment, was also broken into during a smash-and-grab robbery while Guerrero and her team were conducting interviews for the story. That was definitely not part of the plan.
“The first thing we all thought of was, "Oh no, all of our equipment was in there, some of the more costly items were with us,” Guerrero said. “I had my purse with me because I never leave my purse in a car."
Guerrero said despite all the drama, she wouldn’t change how she handled the story.
"Would I do that again? I probably would, but don't tell my dad."
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