LARUE COUNTY, Ky. — A LaRue County family is at a loss this week after they said someone stole a pumpkin plant growing outside their home.
The 'heist' as Caleb Phelps called it, was caught on camera Sunday afternoon. While he isn't too upset over it and doesn't expect to find the thieves, Phelps says it's a lesson learned for his two little girls.
"The pumpkins were an accident," Phelps said. "Over the summer, we had neighborhood piglets get out and, long story short, they destroyed a pumpkin in our drainage ditch and the seeds got planted. We came home from vacation and there was a pumpkin plant."
He snapped a few photos in August. A handful of ripe pumpkins lay in his front lawn.
"We've got two girls. One's in first grade, the other in pre-school, and they've been watching them grow every day since June and we were actually going to harvest them the night we found out they were stolen," Phelps said.
Surveillance video from Sunday around 2 p.m. captured the pumpkin thieves. A car backed into his drive. Then, two people get out, and not a minute and a half later, the car is gone, and so are the pumpkins.
"At the end of the day, they're just pumpkins. Right?" Phelps smiled. "We've got extras in the back. I think more for [my girls], it was the realization and a little loss of innocence that there are people in the world who will do things like that."
It's a lesson they'd read about but hadn't experienced in person until now.
"One of the things we talk about in those books, is hey, you're going to meet people in your daily life that aren't kind," Phelps said. "And they steal and they cheat. But the best way to get back at them is to just not be like that. So, this was a lesson we've been reading about in their children's book come to life."
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