A second Northwest Side neighborhood in San Antonio says its security camera caught a man stealing mail from a cluster mailbox, adding another case to a broader mail-theft problem in the city. In the Oakland Heights case, a gated community, surveillance video shows a man holding a crowbar close to the camera, and a police report says the suspect forced the gate with a crowbar before opening the mailboxes with a key.
The Oakland Heights theft happened on September 27, according to the seed reporting from KSAT. Every piece of mail inside that box was taken within minutes, per the police report cited in the same account. San Antonio police have assigned a detective to the case.
Earlier Northwest Crossing Theft
The Northwest Crossing neighborhood had an earlier mail-theft incident.
San Antonio police, however, say they cannot confirm whether the two thefts are connected. Camelia Juarez, a San Antonio Police Department public information officer, said the video is useful to the investigation and represents a first step toward identifying the suspect, but stopped short of linking the cases. Juarez said mail theft is happening throughout the city and that police want to catch the suspects.
The Northwest Crossing incident, reported earlier this month, also involved a mail-theft suspect captured on a neighborhood camera, according to a KSAT report.
Wood's Message to the Suspect
Wood had a direct message for the man caught on camera: stop stealing mail, leave neighborhoods alone, obey the law, find a job, and return people's mail. Anyone who recognizes the man is asked to contact the SAPD Property Crimes Division at 210-207-7273 or [email protected]. The U.S. Postal Service said it is actively investigating the Oakland Heights theft and recommends residents check their mailboxes every day and sign up for mail alerts to know when important mail is coming.
A Citywide Pattern With Few Arrests
Mail theft has affected other neighborhoods. Northwest Crossing, which has 4,000 homes and 50 cluster mailboxes serving about a third of the neighborhood, per KENS 5, has had its cluster boxes broken into hundreds of times, the neighborhood association's president told that station. One Northwest Crossing mailbox was reportedly out of service for two months, forcing affected homeowners to drive five miles to Richland Hills just to collect their mail.
Citywide numbers tell a similar story of an escalating problem. San Antonio police reported 70 thefts involving 30 or more addresses in 2023, a figure that rose to 97 in 2024 and 126 through September 2025, according to the San Antonio Express-News. The same report counted 4,658 reported mail-theft offenses involving fewer than 10 addresses from 2023 through September 2025, alongside just 35 arrests in that same span.
To address the rising numbers, San Antonio police assembled a task force bringing together SAPD investigators, the Bexar County Sheriff's Office, USPS and area homeowners and apartment associations, the Express-News reported last year. The scope of the problem extends well beyond these two neighborhoods. In the Fieldstone subdivision, residents said thieves had been breaking into mailboxes and stealing packages for more than eight months, with cameras there capturing two men breaking into mailboxes one Friday morning after another man was recorded doing the same in May, according to News 4 San Antonio. One Fieldstone resident said the thieves cashed nearly $6,000 worth of checks and stole her identity.
Arrests do happen occasionally. In May, San Antonio police arrested three people accused of stealing mail from a Northwest Side apartment complex on Gus Eckert Road, with each suspect facing a third-degree felony mail-theft charge, per KSAT's earlier coverage. For now, police have assigned a detective to the Oakland Heights case.
