NEW ORLEANS — There’s still glass on Constance Street where Brendan Batt found the broken remains of his pickup truck window Sunday morning.
“It’s so frustrating and there’s nothing you can do about it,” Batt said. It’s the eighth time since January he’s had to replace the window in his truck.
The glass repair shop near his office knows him so well by now, Batt jokes that he doesn’t even have to introduce himself when he calls.
While he’s filed reports with New Orleans Police about the case in the past, the Metairie veterinarian recently decided he’d take justice into his own hands.
Saturday night, the surveillance camera on the side of Batt’s apartment building caught the result. In the video, a white car pulls up beside Batt’s truck. A person gets out, bashes in the driver’s side window, hopped in, and shortly after, a flashbang explodes in the person’s face.
The explosion scares the would-be thief off.
“Just ruins my property and then something happens to him that he doesn’t like,” said Batt. “It’s not pleasant for this device to go off near your face or near your body.”
The flashbang was rigged up on a tripwire in the truck, which explodes when the center console is opened. It’s a 12-guage round with no projectile, but it does shoot gunpower and is very loud.
Batt says he did test runs with the device to make sure no one would be severely injured, and he’s been unapologetically booby trapping his own truck for two months.
“Every single night, yeah. I set it up religiously,” he said. “Because I don’t want to walk out to a broken window and not have it detonate.”
“The way I’m setting it up, nobody’s going to get like really badly hurt. And that’s important to me because I don’t think blowing someone up fits the crime of someone breaking into my window,” said Batt.
He is not encouraging others to set up similar rigs, but says he’d like to see more people set up security cameras to catch criminals. He’s confident this video, which has been seen tens of thousands of times, will help police make an arrest.
“I back the blue. I’m a proud supporter of the NOPD, and they put this whole case together, and they’re going to get this guy. And that’s something that doesn’t always happen. But everybody can set up a camera, and everybody can kind of defend their own property in that way,” he said.
Batt also says he feels let down by current elected officials in New Orleans and would like to see more people get out and vote.
“The Mayor doesn’t care about this. The DA doesn’t care about this. The people care about this because it’s happening to them everyday,” he said.
Even if police make an arrest, Batt says he’ll continue setting up his tripwire until he no longer feels it’s necessary.
Eyewitness News has reached out to New Orleans Police for more information on any possible suspects in this case.