‘I was not thinking’: Thief returns stolen Christmas lights after seeing this Facebook post

One Staten Island, New York, man who was in desperate need of outdoor Christmas lights — or who's just a grinch — returned holiday decorations he stole from someone's home after footage of the crime showed up on Facebook on Monday.

"I was not thinking when I did it," he admitted in an apology note he left on his second visit to the house, when he returned two laser projector lights.

Video of the holiday heist was captured and posted first to a private Facebook page before retired police Lt. Michael Reilly shared it on his public profile. In the footage, a man is seen getting out of a dark, double-parked car, running across the homeowners' lawn in the Huguenot neighborhood to steal the lights before dashing back to his vehicle.

When he learned the man returned the lights after seeing the shared clip, Reilly updated his post, writing, "The man in the video returned the lights with a note apologizing. The family who owned the lights extends a big THANK YOU to everyone for sharing!"

Of his decision to share the video of the theft in the first place, Reilly said, "I figured I'd put it out as an alert for people to be on the lookout and basically make people see that these things are happening again."

Little did he know it would alert the guilty thief himself, and lead him to return the stolen lights the very next day.

"Hello, I wanna humbly appologize [sic] for stealing your lights it wasn't till I seen what u posted on Facebook that I realized what I did. I am not that person you see on the video. I was not thinking when I did it. I hope you have a nice Holiday. This is the first and last time I will ever do this," the man who lifted the decorations wrote in his apology note.

"He’s never going to do it again! We’ll see how that works out," Reilly said.