Earlier this month, employees at one Louisiana Chevrolet dealership arrived at work to discover dozens of vehicles missing their wheels and tires.
Security footage shows two men sneaking onto the property of Matt Bowers Chevrolet in Slidell, Louisiana, and proceeding to defeat locks, alarms, and surveillance video. According to police, the men even went as far as to tamper with the dealership’s exterior lighting, allowing them to work under the cover of darkness.
The thieves stole 124 wheels and tires, targeting a variety of Chevrolet vehicles including the Tahoe and Malibu, leaving the vehicles without wheels and tires on wooden blocks. Once they removed the wheels, the thieves loaded them into a U-Haul and drove away. Police suspect these were professionals who took approximately $120,000 worth of wheels and tires.
This isn’t the first time a Chevrolet dealership has been the target of thieves. In 2016, a Texas dealership discovered 40 Cadillac Escalades without wheels and tires. In 2015, 48 sets of wheels and tires were stolen from the Peltier Chevrolet Dealership in Tyler, Texas.
Police are investigating the theft, and are exploring if the Slidell, Louisiana dealership theft is related to another robbery in February at the Cutshaw Chevrolet dealership in Grapeland, Texas. There, thieves took off with wheels and tires from 16 Chevrolet vehicles. Those thieves also placed the vehicles on wooden blocks and drove off in a U-Haul truck.
Matt Bowers, the Slidell, Louisiana dealership owner, is offering a $25,000 reward for information that would lead to the arrest of the suspects.
Wheel thieves have been targeting dealerships for some time now, often hitting at night while getting away with tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of merchandise, and it looks like they aren’t slowing down. Here’s to hoping someone will catch them sooner, rather than later.
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Source: WFMZ
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View Comments
**wheel lock keys anyone??
armed guards
Sharks with friggin laser beams tied to their heads.
One has to suspect former employees because knowing how to override the security system required someone who knew the dealership because these guys knew once they had defeated the security system.. they could work undisturbed for hours as that's how long it would have taken to remove 124 wheels and tires.
Low lives. Fence the dealerships and bring in the dogs.
Ah, wheels. I fondly recall the story a while back that y'all regaled us with regarding the dufuss that got himself a Yukon or something on his chest for doing exactly this thing. I suspect his time at the pearly gates with ol' St Pete may have sounded a bit like this.
Dufuss: "But the wheel wouldn't come off so I had to get under it to pry it off from the back."
St. Pete: "Karma. You gotta be careful about doing stuff like that, dude."
They rolled the tape and confirmed, yes thieves ripped them off. They saved $10-15 an hour by not paying for a service that provides real-time monitoring. Maybe the economics off that pay-off as long as Insurance is covering the cost.
My only suggestion 4 ALL CHEVROLET DEALERSHIP'S; "ASK THE CITY TO [BOOT] EVERY AUTOMOBILE IN THEIR LOT & PUT THE "KEY'S" IN A BANK VAULT 2 STOP THE THEFT"!!!!! (w/a boot on everything: it keep's the lug nut's from being in view; even w/the cover's on)!!