Two Washington teens were arrested moments after a crime was committed because one neighbor was looking out for another.

Earlier this week, Gasper Cruz-Vasquez, 16, and Jose Gamboa-Gomez, 17, both Washington High School students, were charged with felony breaking and entering and felony larceny, after a woman called the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office to report suspicious activity at a nearby residence in River Road Estates in Washington.

According to Lt. Jim Vanlandingham, the neighbor made the call after she watched someone back a car into her neighbor’s yard.

“What she told us was suspicious to her was one of them stopped and started looking around like he was about to do something wrong; looking around like he was seeing if he was being watched,” Vanlandingham said.

The witness reported the crime as it was happening: one of the suspects walking around the back of the residence then letting the other suspect in the front door.

“From her vantage point, they could not see her,” Vandlingham said.

Deputies who happened to be nearby stopped the vehicle shortly after it left the trailer park, and power tools stolen from the residence, identified by the victim of the theft, were located during a search, according to a press release from the sheriff’s office.

“The car never made it past 300 yards down River Road,” Vanlandingham said. “Obviously, hats off to the witness. She stayed on the phone, watched them leave the trailer park, told which direction they were going. … It all hinged on her, her phone call and her eyewitness account of what took place.”

According to FBI statistics, in 2015, law enforcement agencies nationwide cleared (made arrests) in 21.9 percent of larceny cases reported; 12.9 percent for burglaries. Once suspects have left the scene of a break in, it’s challenging to find them — unless there’s an eyewitness.

Vandlandingham said since he’s been head of criminal investigations, there were two more incidents in which alert residents called in a crime as it was occurring and investigators were able to make immediate arrests: at Douglas Crossroads, when a man watched suspects load up an out-of-town neighbor’s fishing equipment; and earlier this month, when reports of two men walking around a neighbor’s house led to the arrest of three people accused of a series of Blount’s Creek break ins.

“That’s two times that citizens have just solved the case for us — just busted it wide open,” Vanlandingham said.

Cruz-Vasquez and Gamboa-Gomez were detained at the Beaufort County Detention Center under $15,000 secured bonds. Cruz-Vasquez also faces the misdemeanor charge of giving false information to law enforcement for lying to deputies about his date of birth, Vanlandingham said.