Teens’ illegal house parties cause major damage, dread in Santa Rosa neighborhoods

The Fountaingrove home Rosemary Yates is rebuilding after the Tubbs fire is about six weeks away from completion, but it just played host to the first party since October 2017, and that's a big problem for Yates.

Neither she nor her fiancé had any get-togethers, and they didn't know the dozens of uninvited guests Friday night that crashed their unoccupied home.

They were a band of some 40 teenagers, who police said broke into Yates' home through an unlocked window and partied for hours in the empty rooms of her house - the latest in a series of targeted break-ins in which young people find unoccupied homes, share addresses over social media, and meet up for bootleg parties.

Yates is still taking inventory, but she said the damage could set her back thousands of dollars. Walls have holes in them, hardwood floors were scarred up by dancing, and an armchair was broken when it was hurled down the stairs. A closet was treated as a toilet - the home's bathrooms aren't functional yet - and the revelers left behind the stench of vomit, spilled liquor and cannabis smoke.

“I spent more than $2.5 million building this house for more than two years, and this happens,” said Yates, a 60-year-old technology consultant. “It's awful.”

It's not the first time a vacant North Bay house has been targeted for an illegal party by teens and young adults, authorities said. Some appear to have used real estate listings to identify unoccupied homes and then coordinated the meetups on social media sites such as Instagram, according to investigators.

Santa Rosa police said they had not observed any recent spike in the illicit gatherings. But Fountaingrove, with hilltop views and hundreds of expansive homes unoccupied while being rebuilt after the Tubbs fire, would appear an easy mark.

Residents there have complained that rebuilding from the October 2017 fires has coincided with an increase in break-ins and vandalism at homes under construction, as well as large numbers of late-night teen visitors.

“This one sounded particularly egregious because of the damage that was done,” Santa Rosa Police Sgt. Dave Linscomb said. He noted that Yates was rebuilding from the 2017 firestorm, so the break-in and vandalism sparked particular concern and outrage in the community.

“To me, it's kind of pathetic,” Linscomb said.

Officers assigned to the Fountaingrove area would be made aware and would step up patrols as a result, he said.

Surveillance cameras caught images and footage of some of the revelers - in addition to video posted to social media from inside Yates' house - and police are searching for suspects. No arrests were reported as of Tuesday.

Yates recalled a vehicle with at least two girls in it reversing down the remote driveway that leads to her home shortly before she left Friday, and her security camera footage appears to show two girls climbing up the stairs on the back of her property within five minutes of her departure.

They gained entry through an unlocked window and the party kicked off several hours later, authorities said.

In addition to numerous clips of security footage, which Yates shared with The Press Democrat, she had other help: Someone provided her a series of videos created using the Snapchat app, through which people can send each other annotated videos and pictures.

One of the series of Snapchat videos depicts the inside of Yates' home and teens dancing and rapping along to YG's “You Broke.” Some are standing on Yates' tables or other furniture.

The shared Snapchat clips show a procession of trespassers, some carrying flashlights, going up and down the stairs behind her house. It's unclear how many were aware they were being recorded - by a peer and by a home security system.

“The kids narced on themselves by creating a video of themselves,” Yates said. “They made it easy for us.”

Instagram account at issue

The furtive parties have taken place across the Bay Area, but a series last summer at “very, very nice homes,” most in Sonoma County, brought local private investigator Scott Wilmore onto the case. He was hired after a home in northeast Santa Rosa was targeted for a party on a rare night when its occupants were away.

The Instagram account used to coordinate that gathering and others had more than 1,000 ?followers at its peak, he said. It has since been shut down.

“That number alone is frightening to me, that there are more than 1,000 kids waiting on that page for news of a party,” Wilmore said. “It was not just Santa Rosa kids. There were parties posted in Fairfield, Vallejo, the East Bay, Oakland. There were people from those areas coming up here.”

After scouting and site selection, the system is fairly simple, Wilmore said: Post a photo and an address of the target home for account followers, and an arrival time.

He said he has talked with real estate agents, homeowners, law enforcement officers and teenagers to bolster his understanding of the practice.

He described a similar party that was apparently planned in August at the Franz Valley Road home of Norma Hunt, widow of the late Lamar Hunt, founder and owner of the Kansas City Chiefs football team that will take on the San Francisco 49ers in the Super Bowl on Sunday.

Wilmore said he reached out to a real estate agent for the Hunt house, and later received calls from security officials with Chiefs and the NFL who wanted more information about what was going on. By early September, he said, the involved Instagram account was inactive.

“I don't know what led to that page getting shut down,” Wilmore said. “But I don't think it was coincidental.”

A company spokesperson for Facebook, which owns Instagram, said the account was removed for violating policies that are meant to deter the promotion of criminal activity.

“Instagram is committed to fostering a safe environment, and we do not allow people to use the platform to coordinate harm or promote crime,” the spokesperson said.

A spokesman for the Hunt family confirmed that nothing happened at Norma Hunt's home and declined to comment on any investigation.

Strangers ransack house

Wilmore was hired last summer by Santa Rosa resident Emily Pope, who first suspected burglary when she returned to her home last August: a big-screen TV, two other televisions, a computer and hard drives with her three children's baby photos were gone.

But this was something more than theft. Alcohol in the house had been consumed, cigarette butts littered the home and there was vomit inside and on the driveway. In her bedroom, the mattress had been flipped around and somebody had left condoms and wrappers in her bed.

“My room was just destroyed,” Pope said. She didn't sleep there for three months, knowing only that “unknown people had done awful things in my bed.”

The very next night, her house was again called out on Instagram for a party. Pope learned of it through a tip from a friend who either had seen the post or knew someone who had.

Alone in the house with three kids, her husband still out of town, the 39-year-old pediatric nurse practitioner said she grabbed a baseball bat and waited. Dozens of would-be house crashers showed up.

Pope said she talked to some of them and photographed a few license plates before letting them know she was calling the cops. Some stuck around and talked to her and the police, but officers made no arrests, Pope said.

Wilmore worked the case and tracked down the Instagram account - the same found to be targeting the Hunt property. Pope still doesn't know how or why her house was chosen.

But going through the files compiled by Wilmore, she said she came to a startling discovery. The pediatric nurse practitioner said she recognized youngsters who were partying at her house that night as patients of hers. She no longer sees them.

Her 9-year-old daughter has had nightmares about intruders, Pope said. “She's waiting for it to happen again.”

Alarming discovery

Yates returned to her Fountaingrove home with her fiancé Saturday morning to set up the house's new security system.

She had trouble making sense of the wreckage she encountered.

“It was like looking at a crowd and not recognizing any faces,” she recalled. “I was like, ‘What IS this?'?”

As word spread about what had happened, Yates witnessed an outpouring of support from “an enormous network” of friends, concerned neighbors and strangers who have helped to identify the house crashers, she said.

They have been going over surveillance video from Yates' motion-activated security cameras and traces of the party left on social media. People have sent her screenshots of those they suspect organized or attended the party. She's also heard from others who have fallen victim to similar illicit parties, including Pope.

“I thought it was just bad luck, but this is a big problem in Santa Rosa, especially in Fountaingrove,” she said. “We're just pawns in this sort of teen-mob situation. It's bad.”

She's provided videos and crowd-sourced information on suspected identities to the Santa Rosa Police Department.

It's too early to say what charges could result from any arrests, said Linscomb, the sergeant. But “we could possibly be looking at felony-level crimes,” he said.

You can reach Staff Writer Will Schmitt at 707-521-5207 or will.schmitt@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @wsreports.