At first, Kris Diel thought that one of her kids had left the garage door of her Hugo house wide open overnight. Then she looked inside Thursday morning to discover that hanging tool boxes had been emptied, and her truck with her teenage daughter's customized wheelchair loaded in back was stolen.
"It wasn't just a wheelchair, it was a personal thing of hers," said Diel, a widowed mother of three. "She picked it out, helped design it, and picked the colors."
Diel's 13-year-old daughter, Amber, has spina bifida and the TiLite 2GX Swing Away wheelchair is her lifeline. Without the chair, which is valued at $5,700, Amber is housebound and can't get to appointments such as Thursday's therapy session to help her relearn how to walk after four surgeries in the past two months.
Amber burst into tears when her mother told her that her pink chair with black cushions and light gray wheels was gone.
Sometime after the Diels went to bed at 10 p.m. Wednesday, somebody entered their closed but unlocked front door on the 13800 block of Geneva Avenue N.
While Diel, her daughter and two sons slept, the crooks grabbed the keys to her red 2004 4-door extended cab Chevy Avalanche from inside the house, went into the garage and loaded thousands of dollars of her late husband's tools. Then she surmises that the crook manually opened the garage door, let the truck roll down the driveway before starting it up, and drove away.
"I was robbed," said Diel, whose husband died five years ago. "I cried and was angry. They didn't just take my things, but my daughter's."
Diel asked neighbors if they had seen anybody or noticed anything suspicious, but none had. On Thursday afternoon, authorities had no suspects in custody and no leads.
