Looting is the stealing itself — the act, not the person. When people smash shop windows after a disaster and carry out food, TVs, or anything left behind, that is looting. News and law use the word. It can sit as a noun (there was looting in the streets) or as the -ing form of the verb (they were looting the stores). Same dark picture as loot and looter: not everyday shoplifting, and not a planned burglary, but taking things because order has broken down — war, riot, flood, a city with the lights out. People stretch it a little in games ("looting a chest"), but in the newspaper it is never a game.