Police believe a one-ton cube van stolen from Koch Ford early last Wednesday morning was used to steal more than $10,000 worth of oversized 18- to 20-inch Nitto brand tires from Kal Tire shortly afterwards.
Police believe a one-ton cube van stolen from Koch Ford early last Wednesday morning was used to steal more than $10,000 worth of oversized 18- to 20-inch Nitto brand tires from Kal Tire shortly afterwards.
Though the van was later recovered approximately one kilometre south of Meanook, the stolen tires are still missing.
This is the third time this year that Kal Tire has been broken into, and owner Ron Burchby said he is not the only entrepreneur plagued by thefts.
“One guy after another has been stolen from, ” said Burchby of other business owners he has spoken with. “I ’ve been broken into so many times, I can ’t even count any more. ”
The closest he could get is an estimate: 12 to 15 break-ins in the last four years.
Burchby acknowledged that police have made progress with theft-related arrests recently.
“They may have caught a few guys, but they haven ’t caught all of them or near all of them, ” he said. “Or, if they ’ve caught them, it hasn ’t bothered them enough to quit stealing.
“We can ’t rely on our police. ”
As for solutions, Burchby has a couple. He plans to spend more than $5,000 on video cameras and other security measures. He is also looking beyond what he can do as one business.
“Something that keeps coming up is the fact that maybe we as business owners need to get together and hire some security people to actually patrol our businesses from our close time until our open time, ” said Burchby.
He added that another approach may be for any businesses with security cameras to hire a single person to monitor all the video feeds and answer an after-hours phone line.
“In this town, there isn ’t an after-hours call service, which I ’m sure there needs to be, ” he said.
As for the specifics of the July 10 break-in, Burchby said, “What they did here was they took all sets of four (tires). They knew what they were doing, because they chose the most expensive tires and the most popular tires.
“Would they be easy to sell on the street? In a heartbeat. ”
Burchby said the thieves not only knew what they were after -they also knew where to find it without being detected. The only warehouse that was compromised lacked the alarm system used for other warehouses on the property.
“Somebody had to know, ‘Hey, this is the one that we want to get into, and these are the tires that we want, ’ ” said Burchby.
He said the thieves also tried to hotwire a customer ’s vehicle that was on site, breaking a door handle and ripping apart the steering column in an unsuccessful effort to start it.
He hypothesized that the thieves planned to use the truck to spirit away more tires because “their eyes were bigger than the truck box ” of the cube van. Approximately 30 more tires were found out of place at Kal Tire, abandoned by the thieves.
Burchby said taking a full inventory to discover exactly how many tires were stolen could take weeks.
Anyone with information on the crime is asked to call the Athabasca RCMP during regular business hours (780-675-5122) or Crimestoppers (1-800-922-8477).
