How fearless sneaker collector busted NYC porch pirate with fake package: ‘I grabbed a baseball bat’
He knocked it out of the park!
A sneaker collector from Queens got so furious after dozens of Nikes were swiped from his porch, he set up a decoy package filled with dog poop — then collared the crook himself, he told The Post.
“I thought, ‘This guy’s going to have a surprise when he gets this package,'” said Carlos Mejia, a 35-year-old plumber living in Richmond Hill, Queens. “I just held him down until the cops came.”
Mejia, whose gutsy citizen’s arrest was caught on camera, was on the job last week when he watched a thief steal a package of $250 Air Jordans from his porch live via doorbell camera, he said.
“I was at work and I got angry. I couldn’t continue working because I couldn’t do anything,” he said. “I tried to yell through the doorbell [device], telling him to please leave the package and he just didn’t care.”
The shoe snatcher grabbed the parcel shortly after it was delivered at 10:40 a.m. on March 27 and drove away in a Honda CR-V with a glittery steering wheel cover.
The incident came after over 100 of his packages — including his wife’s $1,500 Canada Goose jacket and prized green Air Jordans for his daughter — were pilfered by porch pirates in recent months, he said.
So he hatched a plan to catch the crook by filling a cardboard box with a smelly special delivery from his English bulldog Hazel.
He added a pee pad soaked by the pooch and a note proclaiming, “F—K YOU” then slapped on a UPS delivery label to make it look real.
To his surprise, a different thief tried to snatch the package from his porch on Saturday, prompting Mejia to take matters into his own hands.
“I was like, ‘This is crazy, I gotta do something about it’ so I grabbed a baseball bat, came out and held him down until the cops got here,” he said. “When I came out the door he went, ‘Wow, wow, wow, wow’. My first instinct was he was [he’s] going to run so I shut the gate.”
“I was like, ‘You’re on my property now’ and he was like, ‘Don’t hit me, please don’t hit me,’” he said. “I just held him down until the cops came.”
Police then arrested the suspected porch pirate, identified as 36-year-old Victor Stazzone, according to another video. He was charged with petit larceny, criminal possession of stolen property, and criminal trespass charges.
The alleged thief never got to see the contents of the package, Mejia said.
Overall, Mejia reported so many stolen packages Nike opened two investigations into him “because they think I’m running some sort of scam,” he said.
Porch pirates are a widespread problem in his section of Queens with many neighbors reporting swiped deliveries.
As for the crook in the Honda, he hasn’t stopped stealing.
“I actually saw him pass by my house today…He follows the UPS and the Fed Ex trucks,” Mejia said. “He’s still on the run.”