WATCH: Thief ransacks family home as oblivious kids play just metres away
Cameras have captured a brazen thief sneak into and ransack a Queensland home while two young children sat just metres away.
Cruising in a stolen car, casing the neighbourhood, disturbing footage shows the barefooted man watch Wendy Patterson leave her Kuraby home before he pulls up in her driveway.
While her husband uses power tools down the side of the home, the thief sneaks into the unmanned garage and loads the rest of his tools into the getaway car.
What comes next though, is every parent's worst nightmare.
CCTV footage shows the intruder quietly open the door, search one bedroom before sneaking past the family's two young children in the lounge room in an effort to ransack another room.
"Just knowing that he is standing at the door, watching the kids,” Robert Patterson told 7 News.
"How dare he get that close to my children,” Wendy added.
As the thief makes one final dash for the getaway car, the door slams behind, prompting five-year-old Oscar to investigate.
Watching the man load his scooter into a car, Oscar screams for his father who chases after the man reversing down the road in a Ford Falcon.
"That's when he put it into drive and sort of come for me, so I just jumped to the side,” Robert added.
An off-duty policeman spotted the car being driven erratically and called it into his colleagues and followed it at low speed until other officers arrived and arrested the man in nearby Rochedale South.
"This style of offender is becoming more and more common,” Queensland Police inspector Steve Flori told 7 News.
