A man was arrested after breaking into Kim Kardashian’s Hidden Hills property on Sunday, August 10, and driving off in a staff member’s car before he was caught, according to NBC Los Angeles and NBC News.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department identified the suspect as 27-year-old Trey Mendel. According to ABC7 Los Angeles, a security guard on the property spotted Mendel entering through a side door just before 4 p.m. and alerted deputies. Investigators say Mendel loaded items into a vehicle before taking a staff member’s car for what ABC7 described as a joyride, and he was arrested nearby before he could leave the area. He faces charges of burglary and taking a vehicle without the owner’s consent, with formal charges still pending review by the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office.
Kardashian and her children were not home when the break-in happened. The residence was reportedly in the middle of renovations at the time, which may explain why a side entrance was accessible. No injuries were reported, and authorities have not said whether Mendel had any prior connection to Kardashian, her staff, or the property.
The incident adds to a long history of security concerns tied to Kardashian’s real estate. She was famously robbed at gunpoint in her Paris hotel room in 2016, a case in which French police eventually convicted multiple people, per NBC News’ earlier coverage of that arrest. That case became a widely cited example of how publicly tracking a celebrity’s location and travel, something Kardashian has said she has since become far more careful about, can create real physical risk. This latest break-in at her Hidden Hills home, even without anyone home to confront the intruder, reinforces the same basic lesson for any homeowner with a highly visible profile: an empty house under renovation is still a target, and the gap between “not home” and “not watched” is often where a burglary happens.
The Kardashian-Jenner family’s homes have been targeted by burglars multiple times over the years, prompting the family to invest heavily in gated access, private security patrols, and surveillance systems across their Hidden Hills compound. Sunday’s arrest suggests at least one layer of that system, a guard physically present on-site, still did its job even when a side door didn’t.
Hidden Hills itself is a private, gated equestrian community west of Los Angeles that has long attracted celebrity homeowners precisely because of its restricted public access and 24-hour patrol presence, which makes a successful break-in there notable regardless of whose name is on the deed. Renovation projects, however, routinely puncture that kind of perimeter security, since contractors need working entrances, deliveries need staging areas, and a house full of workers is harder to fully lock down than one that’s simply occupied. Neither Kardashian nor her representatives have publicly detailed what security changes, if any, will follow the incident, and the sheriff’s department has not indicated whether Mendel is believed to have targeted the property specifically because of the ongoing construction.
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