Photo/Illutration A staged example of how suspicious rocks were found on the gate of a house in Kobe’s Tarumi Ward (Momoe Harano)

KOBE—Homeowners who notice small stones placed on the gate of their house may wonder if a bird picked them up and dropped them there.

“Or, is it a child’s mischief?” they might also wonder.

In these instances, drop the fanciful musings and contact the police immediately. There is a high possibility criminals are targeting the house, as evidenced by Hyogo prefectural police calling on residents in Kobe to take this precaution.

It was early afternoon on Jan. 29 when a woman in her 50s who lives in Kobe’s Tarumi Ward reached out to police.

According to the prefectural police’s Tarumi Police Station, the woman said, “Two young men rang the intercom at my house and tried to open the gate without permission.”

The woman looked out her window, and she saw two young men standing there.

Later, she checked outside, and she found pebbles 1 to 3 centimeters in size placed on the gate and near the garage of her home.

Police searched a nearby residential area and found similar pebbles placed at 13 homes, not including the woman’s, during the period from Jan. 29 to Feb. 4.

The prefectural police are wary of the possibility of “marking.”

The pebbles found were placed in spots where they would fall when the gate or garage is opened or closed.

The prefectural police believe that the rocks may have been used by burglary groups to check for people coming in and out of the house.

If the pebbles remain in place for a while, the residence is considered unoccupied or to have few people coming and going; this may signal a group of burglars that it is a good place to target.

The Tarumi Police Station has asked local residents: “If you see a stone placed on a gate or other areas, please report it immediately. If you find stones at an unoccupied house, please remove them and check regularly to see if the inside of the house has been ransacked.”

The area where the pebbles were found is a residential neighborhood surrounded by an elementary school and a high school.

A woman in her 40s who lives nearby said, “Many of the residents here are elderly, and the generation that built their houses 40 years ago are leaving or rebuilding, so there are many empty houses.”

A woman in her 60s who was walking her dog in the area said she felt police car patrols have increased since the end of January.

She said, “An officer told me to be careful if a stone was placed at my home. It is a dangerous world we live in, I thought.”

A 70-year-old man who works for an organization said that since the end of last year, cigarette butts, not rocks, have been dumped at a certain spot in front of his gate about once every three days.

He also said that there was a suspicious man who visited him in November, saying, “I will repair your roof for a low price.”

“It’s creepy, including the stones,” he said. “I try to be careful and make sure that at least one of my family members is always present at home.”

(This article was written by Momoe Harano and Seiya Hara.)

Related News