Caught on camera: Hayward man confronts would-be thief trying to steal his truck

A surveillance camera captured a Hayward man confront a would-be thief trying to steal his truck in the middle of the night.

Francis Jones and his wife received an alert from their surveillance system indicating someone was in their truck at 2:30 a.m. last week.

Barefoot and half asleep, Jones darted out the door to confront the suspects.

"I didn’t have a plan when I ran outside the door," Jones said. "I just saw people in the car. I wasn’t going to let them go and take my stuff."

The surveillance video showed Jones pull a suspect out of the truck and hold him by the neck as he yelled for his wife to call police. That's when a second suspect fired a single shot.

"I had the guy in front of me and I didn’t plan that," Jones said. "I was just holding the guy a certain way. That’s when the guy tried to shoot at me. There was not much of me to hit because the guy was in front of me."

It’s unclear if the man Jones had in a headlock was hit by the bullet. After the shot was fired, the two suspects jumped into their car and sped away.

"We should probably think next time about actually going out there and facing them because it was really hard to watch some guy shoot up my husband," Jennifer Offner, Jones' wife, said.

Offner said it was terrifying to watch. She’s grateful her husband is OK.

"I said 'next time be a little less tough,'" she said. "'Don’t go out there. At least go out with a bat.'"

Jones said he and his wife have lived in the area of 20 years and have had two cars stolen from in front of their house.

"At some point you just get tired of it and you want to stop them," he said. "I did not plan to get shot at."

While Hayward police said they encourage people to be good witnesses, they say confronting criminals isn’t wise.

"This could’ve gone a number of different ways," said Cassondra Fovel of the Hayward Police Department. "In these cases, you never know if somebody is armed."

Police said the suspects ditched the getaway car, which was stolen, a few blocks away. Police were working to track down the men.

Meanwhile, Jones and his family are grateful that things turned out OK.

"I think he’s a hero to our family," Offner said.