Nancy Guthrie’s neighbor said violent crime is almost unheard of in the area, as he described the leafy Arizona burb as so safe that there isn’t even a need for streetlights.
“In the 50 years I’ve lived here, I’ve never heard of any crime like this,” Catalina Foothills Association President Tom Pugh told Fox News Digital Wednesday.
“It’s a friendly neighborhood. It’s [a] very comfortable place to live. That’s one of the main reasons I moved here many years ago,” he said, as the community continues to come to terms with the shocking disappearance of “Today” host Savannah Guthrie’s mom over the weekend.
People walk every day in the streets around the neighborhood. They know one another, greet one another, walk their dogs,” Pugh said, with the search for the 84-year-old Nancy entering its fourth day.
“And by and large, there’s just no crime, or you know, the crime that does occur is a petty kind of crime, where someone might leave their car unlocked and kids walk by and take something. But nothing like this has occurred since I’ve been here,” he said.
Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos described the abduction as extraordinary for the neighborhood.
“We don’t see those kinds of monsters here,” he said, while adding that it was too soon to say if the apparent abduction was targeted or random.
Crime rates in Catalina Foothills, an unincorporated area in the northern suburbs of Tucson, with a population of around 50,000, are significantly lower than both the national average and the Tucson average.
Catalina Foothills saw 194 violent crime incidents per 100,000 residents in 2024, according to the most recently available FBI-reported statistics.
That compares to a national average of 359 violent crime incidents per 100,000, and 589 per 100,000 for Tucson.
It also saw 824 property crime incidents per 100,000 in 2024, compared to the national average of 1,760 per 100,000, and the Tucson average of 3,313 per 100,000.
Catalina Foothills has violent crime levels 46% lower than the national average, property crime levels 53% lower than the national average, and is safer than approximately 60% of US cities.
Here’s the latest on Savannah Guthrie’s missing mom
Pugh was asked if he was shocked that police had said many of the houses didn’t have Ring doorbell cameras, making obtaining surveillance footage of the night of Nancy’s disappearance difficult.
“No, it doesn’t shock me. It’s not really a high-security area. People don’t really look at things like that,” he said.
“There aren’t streetlights here because the sky here is one of the most perfect skies to be seen in a neighborhood in the country, and so people like dark skies and aren’t really afraid of the dark,” he added.
“So that’s an indication that that’s not an area where people are particularly apprehensive.”