Dang Thief

I can't stand a thief. I think we ought to go back to cutting hands off.

This local punk has been stealing stuff for several years and got caught in January in a deal that would have made a good scene for Cops. The guy had taken a splitting wedge and a turnbuckle with a large bolt in the end of it and had chizled the concrete blocks out of our well house at the shooting club. He was after the 6' of copper wire that goes from the control box to the top of the well I assume he was the same one who stole the same $10 worth of wire 3 months prior to that.

At any rate Evidently he worked himself too hard and decided to take a break in the clubhouse. He broke in there and took a nap on the couch using the heater that had been in the well house to warm up by. Unfortunately for him, that was the same morning that the local police department had it's range time scheduled for qualifying the officers. 9 police officers and 8 recruits showed up at the range at day break and were under the shed loading up their guns. One of the officers went over to the clubhouse to start the coffee pot and the guy hearing the key in the door broke and run over the top of the guy opening the door.

Anyhow, he's out on bail waiting for his trial on that deal, plus a trial for Non Support and several other things.

Last week he broke into a local truck garage and stole the air conditioner out of a big rig and they have him on tape selling it at a scrap yard for $28. He came back to the truck yard the next night with a cutting torch and proceeded to cut the headache bars off trailers. He had on bar loaded up and went to cut a tailgate off a coal bucket. In the process, he set the cargo of scrap on fire burning the coal bucket to the ground. The owner's wife came home to see the fire and chased the man. He almost got away except the owner pulled in and caught him. It took 2 hours for the state police to show up to arrest him.

What do you suppose this crook was going to do with a 1000 lb tailgate? I'm curious as to how he planned to haul such a thing off.

I believe in 2 hours of waiting on the police to show up, the thug would have tried to attack me and I'd have put an end to his thieving.

Skipper