Family Moving Cross-Country Has U-Haul of Their Belongings Stolen Days Before Christmas
12NewsAZ/YouTubePacking up all of your belongings, uprooting your life, and moving across the street is an ordeal. So the idea of doing all of that and then relocating across the country is undoubtedly stressful.
For one couple the endeavor became devastating when they learned that the U-Haul they had filled with all of their possessions had been stolen as they attempted to move from Missouri to Arizona.
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The couple and their granddaughters had stopped overnight at a Holiday Inn.
Gene and Jamie Bruce told KPHO that they had spent the past two years saving up for a move to Phoenix, where they planned to spend their golden years. Their plans were thwarted, however, when the truck they rented was stolen over the weekend. The couple and their two granddaughters left Missouri on December 15. They stopped overnight at a Holiday Inn Express & Suites in New Mexico.
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By 3 a.m., the U-Haul was gone.
The couple drove separately, one in their pickup truck and the other in the U-Haul, and arrived at the Holiday Inn late at night. “The lady at the desk said we weren’t allowed to park our U-Haul at the property and that we had to park it on the street,” Jamie Bruce said, per KPHO.
The couple followed her instructions. Still, they knew the risk they had taken. Gene Bruce checked the trucks around midnight and everything was fine. But when Jamie Bruce went out at 3 a.m., she found broken glass in the street and the U-Haul was gone.
'We just both kind of fell to pieces,' Gene Bruce said.
When Jamie Bruce went back inside and told her husband the news, he thought she was joking. Sadly, she was not. “I ran downstairs, and I was just in disbelief and couldn’t understand why,” he said. “We just both kind of fell to pieces.”
The couple’s pickup truck was still there. After calling the police, they drove around the area looking for the U-Haul. A short time later, an employee for the moving company told the couple that the U-Haul had been found in a car wash parking lot.
The thieves took new furniture, computers, Christmas presents, and important documents.
The couple met the police there, but everything had already been stolen out of the truck. The family had new furniture, Christmas presents, Northwest Football League rings, and a military burial flag inside.
Gene Bruce said the thieves also stole important documents such as birth certificates and tax reports from the vehicle. The Bruces claim the criminals have already hacked into their accounts.
In spite of it all, the couple is holding on to their Christmas spirit.
“It’s like, ‘OK, what’s going to happen next? What are we going to do now?’” Gene Bruce said. The move was supposed to be a fresh start for not only the couple but their granddaughters, whose mother died of sepsis shock, according to a GoFundMe launched on the family’s behalf.
So far, they've raised $48,000 of their $65,000 goal. The couple has also filed a report with the Albuquerque Police Department. Even though the family has lost everything, they will not allow the crooks to dampen their Christmas spirit. “No one is going to take that from us,” Jamie Bruce vowed.
