A 40-year-old Edinburg man’s mother helped Hidalgo County sheriff’s investigators identify her son as a package theft suspect after seeing photos of him on Facebook allegedly stealing items from a doorstep, while authorities also received assistance from a neighborhood watch group that caught it all on camera.
Sheriff’s investigators arrested Cirilio Zambrano III on Friday and charged him with two counts of mail theft and a count of evading arrest after he ran from authorities who tried to make contact with him near the Lowe’s Home Improvement store on South McColl and University Drive.
After a brief chase, deputies found Zambrano hiding inside a dumpster at a nearby restaurant.
The investigation into Zambrano began Thursday and investigators were aided by the alleged victim, who caught the theft on a doorbell camera and shared it with a neighborhood watch group, according to a probable cause affidavit for his arrest.
The woman who reported Zambrano told deputies she was waiting for a Fed-Ex delivery and received a notification that the packages had been delivered while she was at work, sheriff’s investigators said.
She then checked her doorbell camera and saw a man in a black car taking her packages, according to the affidavit.
Sheriff’s investigators said she then went home and saw the same man driving the same car down her street, so she followed it and took photos, which she later shared with her neighborhood watch group.
One of those neighbors spotted the black vehicle in the Lowe’s parking lot Friday, the affidavit stated.
Investigators learned Zambrano was the driver of the vehicle, which was abandoned.
Those officers obtained a statement from his mother, who told them he drove the black car, according to the charging document.
“(She) states she saw pictures which were posted on Facebook of the male subject stealing the packages that she can identify as her son Cirilio,” the affidavit stated.
Authorities found Zambrano near the Lowes.
According to investigators, he ran away from deputies and hid inside a nearby dumpster before being arrested.
He remained jailed Monday on a total of $22,000 in bonds, records show.
