'Pee Bandit' mystery: Who is leaving bottles of urine near Pasadena neighborhood?

PASADENA, Calif. (KABC) -- Pasadena officials hope they've finally thwarted the so-called Pee Bandit, a man known in the city for his years-long campaign of leaving several bottles of urine on a local utility box.

People who live around the utility box near the intersection of Colorado Boulevard and San Rafael Avenue say someone has been consistently stacking bottles of urine there for the past six years.

The strange displays caught the eye of Derek Milton and his friend Grant Yansura. They have spent the last two years trying to figure out who the Pee Bandit is and why he places the urine bottles on the box - and there are quite a few of them.

"Stacks of them, you know, nine, 10, 11 bottles," Yansura said. "All different colors, shades - from like an amber hue to more of a healthy, golden, lighter yellow. But some are really dark and concerning."

Yansura and Milton started posting their efforts to solve the mystery on TikTok and have racked up more than 6 million views.

"It kinda backfired on us because now we're the pee guys," Yansura told Eyewitness News while casually eating a burger on camera.

Using hidden cameras, they were able to catch video of the man suspected of being the Pee Bandit. It also showed that the man would access the box from the shoulder of the 134 Freeway.

"We think he's an artist," Yansura said. "Because I've never really understood art, or really get art, and when we couldn't figure out what was going on and I couldn't get it, that's when we realized maybe it's art."

Last month, city workers installed a steel pyramid atop the box near the intersection to keep bottles from stacking up on it. But within days, the pyramid was torn off, presumably by the man leaving the bottles.

The city welded a second pyramid on a couple weeks ago and while it is still on top of the utility box, it has been severely dented to the point where one or two bottles can still be placed there.

However, neighbors say it's been a while since more bottles have appeared.