DRAPER, Utah -- A local filmmaker is hoping that he’ll get his camera and film gear back, one way or another.
On Monday afternoon, Robin Saville was parked in the parking lot at Draper City Park off of 1300 East. He, along with roughly a dozen city employees, walked across the road and onto the bike trail to work on a video project regarding trail safety and etiquette.
“I remember feeling, 'Please don’t be real,' but I knew it was real,” said Saville as he recalled walking back to the park after spending a few minutes down the bike path. “Because it’s so crowded, because families and kids are walking around and there’s so many cars in the parking lot and there’s 10 of 12 of us as a group, and an alarm on the car, you just think, ‘OK, we’re just going to be gone for a few minutes. This isn’t going to happen.’”
Saville’s back window was smashed with all of his professional equipment nowhere to be found.
“They got in the vehicle and took basically everything I had in the car, which was two drones, professional cameras, professional microphone, lights, supporting equipment for a film shoot,” said Saville, who also remarked a recently rented teleprompter was in the vehicle as well as an iPad. “Pretty brazen I think, pretty daring for somebody to set off a car alarm, break a glass window and risk not having anybody notice. And that’s kind of sad right now that nobody did notice, even with a very busy park and with us not very far away.”
As of Tuesday afternoon, no one had some forth with any eyewitness information. There aren’t any security cameras in the park that caught the incident on video. Police told Saville they suspect that someone was watching the parking lot, drove next to the vehicle as the group walked away and finished the job.
“You have to check the surroundings, and just because a lot of people are walking around, I learned yesterday that just because it’s busy and crowded doesn’t mean that there’s not people there watching what you’re doing,” said Saville.
While he does have insurance, Saville hopes to recover some of the gear. So far, just the iPad had been found by someone who located it along Interstate 80 by the Salt Lake Airport on Tuesday. Saville had hopes to use one of his drones at his daughter’s wedding this weekend.
Regardless, an outpouring of friends and strangers alike on social media have shared Saville’s post.
“You go through something where somebody violates you basically, steals your property, and it just hits you so hard," he said. "And then on the other side of it, you’ve got people you don’t even know making posts and sharing your story, saying 'Hey, let’s help this guy.'”
He believes the gear values at more than $15,000 and plans to go through insurance to see what can be covered.
