All of today’s West Seattle Crime Watch reader reports have been about catalytic-converter theft. Hours after we.published this report, two more arrived:

IN A STORE PARKING LOT: Greg says this happened to his Honda Element today in the Delridge Home Depot lot, which happens to be next to the police precinct serving West Seattle and South Park:

Somebody attempted to steal my cat converter while I was in Home Depot. I was parked in the south side of the parking lot facing the Southwest Precinct car park.

I was in the store for 20-30 minutes. When I came out I noticed a large gray Suburban with tinted windows blocking my parking spot and the car next to me.

I thought this was odd but my brain didn’t really register what was happening. I started heading that way and the thieves were very calm in seeing my approach.

The driver was a white female, mid 30’s, dirty blonde hair; she turned to her accomplice, a man, mid 30’s, dark black hair, possibly Hispanic, and through the window of their car I saw him shove something in the back seat of their car, jump in the front and they drove away.

They were not driving super fast and surprisingly were not rushing to get out of there. It wasn’t until I started my car and the engine sounded like a motorcycle that I realized they had almost cut one side of my cat away when I inspected further. I found the Sawzall blade embedded on one side of my cat and provided that to the police.

This was 3 pm in a full parking lot. The lesson here is to park in the center stack with cars facing you and on either side because they were able to box in my car to hide their attempted crime, because I was parked along the perimeter.

The police responded quickly and took an incident report and contacted the Home Depot supervisor for the (video) of the attempt.

IN AN APARTMENT GARAGE: Reported by John: “Just to add to the pile of reports, the catalytic converter on my Prius was stolen sometime early in the morning on Thursday from the locked garage in my apartment building (4730ca in the Junction).”

STATS NOTE: According to this July news release from State Farm Insurance, Washington is #4 in catalytic-converter theft. The number of claims it’s received nationwide has tripled.