Killeen Family Has Trailer Stolen, Police Charge Them To Get It Back

Jim and Melanie McNicol have a lot of reasons to feel frustrated.

KCEN-TV reports that as the family vacationed in 2016, a thief cut the lock to their trailer containing many of their possessions and drove off with their clothes, furniture, and other personal items. As soon as they returned to Killeen, they filed a stolen vehicle report with the police department. What happened next only made things more difficult for this Military Family.

The McNicol family received a letter from Killeen PD saying their trailer had been entered into the Texas Crime Information Center database, but when they tried to look it up it was nowhere to be found. Fast forward to September of 2016, when someone reported finding an abandoned trailer near the Round Rock area.

Troopers said it was an "abandoned" because there was no record of it being stolen. That means the McNicols were on the hook for an $872 impound fee. After having tens of thousands of dollars of property stolen, they got to pay the fee as well to get their own trailer back. The McNicols found some of their stolen property on sale on Ebay and alerted police, but nothing came of the information.

Jim McNicol is a retired combat engineer who served at Fort Hood from 2009 to 2016. He had planned on moving out of state when the theft of his property made him unable to do so. McNicol told KCEN-TV, "Killeen Police...I think they just completely dropped the ball on everything they where supposed to do."