By the Daily Post staff
A homeowner was pushed and robbed after discovering a party at a Palo Alto house he had rented to a couple through Airbnb, police said today.
On Sunday at 1:45 a.m., 911 dispatchers received a hang up call and they sent officers to the call’s location to investigate.
They discovered that the victim, a man in his 60s, went to check on his Airbnb rental in the 100 block of Tennyson Avenue (between Alma and Bryant streets) after receiving notifications that his smoke alarm had been activated.
He had rented the property for the night to two people, or at least so he thought.
Instead, he discovered a party with 40 people, police said.
He walked around the house and asked people to leave, but some refused.
Then two men approached the victim in a bedroom and pushed him to the ground, police said. They grabbed his wallet and cellphone and ran away.
A partygoer helped locate both items and returned them to the victim.
As the victim attempted to call 911, a third suspect pushed him and stole his phone again, along with money in his pants pocket. Like the first two suspects, the third suspect got away.
The victim wasn’t injured.
Police said they are investigating these crimes and they hope to get some leads from the public.
The victim described the third suspect as a black man, between 20 to 25 years old, 5 feet 10 inches tall, and weighing 160 to 170 pounds. He has black hair and brown eyes and was wearing a dark-colored sweat jacket, and orange-colored pants. The other two suspects are also described as black men between 20 to 25 years old.
Anyone with information can call police at (650) 329-2413. Anonymous tips can be e-mailed to [email protected] or sent via text message or voicemail to (650) 383-8984.
I don’t feel sympathetic for this homeowner. He could have rented or sold the place to some family that needs a place to live, but he figured he’d turn it into a hotel, and then this happens. His house is probably a disaster. And he deserves it for being so greedy.
Seriously??
If you have an air bnb in this area you need to watch for the 18-ish locals. They will rent your place “for 2” and a party shows up. Have heard of many around here. Or if you have a vacant house for show/sale, they’ll get in there, given an opportunity. Just teenagers ‘having fun’ but not exactly what you expect …
The homeowner wasn’t smart trying to dismantle a party by himself. He’s lucky he’s living.
Hopefully, this experience will go into the homeowner’s “lesson learned” file and he’ll now rent to a stable monthly tenant. My guess is the neighbors would appreciate this–nightly rentals are not exactly appropriate for a quiet residential neighborhood.
This is an example of why the city doesn’t need to regulate Airbnb. The bad behavior by renters scares off property owners from listing their properties with Airbnb. I’m sorry for this guy’s experience, but I’m glad it happened. A lot of property owners have read this story and decided they won’t be inflicting an Airbnb on their neighborhoods.