Thieves have used stolen pickup trucks to smash their way into businesses in Paris, Ont. twice in as many days.
The first happened around 3:53 a.m. on Saturday at Paris Junction Hobbies.
They offer model planes, trains and automobiles. Remote control vehicles are among their specialties.
“These shelves are normally fully stocked with three or four cars on each shelf. This is literally what I have left,” said David Henwood with Paris Junction Hobbies on Thursday, showing the gaps on his shelves.
There are holes with inventory at the moment because of what happened over the weekend. Security footage shows a pickup truck speed into the storefront, sending glass, merchandise and the front desk flying. It made a perfect entryway for thieves.
“They took out two full windows, the bars and the wall below the bars. They then proceeded to go directly to the RC cars. They know what they were doing,” said Henwood.
The three suspects seen on video continued to empty the shelves within a span of four minutes.
“We lost 34 RC trucks. Total value is just shy of $16,000,” said Henwood.
This type of break-and-enter may sound familiar.
Thieves drove a truck into Brantford Suzuki in Paris on Saturday around 9:30 p.m. and made off with $50,000 in powersports gear.
In terms of any connection between the two cases, Brant County Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) said they don’t believe there is one at this point.
“The trucks that were observed at the sites were different. And there being three suspects versus four, it does seem a little on the nose, but at this point we have no evidence to suggest that they are related,” said Const. Jonathan Bueckert with Brant County OPP.
Police are still on the hunt for suspects in both cases.
Brantford Suzuki is offering a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the suspects.
As for why remote-control trucks were stolen from Paris Junction Hobbies, Henwood points to a couple reasons and says there is a significant market for them.
“There’s even RC chop shops where guys will actually steal brand new RC cars and then dismantle them and sell them for parts,” said Henwood. “You can literally make more money than the price of the car by selling the parts.”
The thieves didn’t get away with the entire mountain of trucks though.
“This is actually a recovered truck,” said Henwood, pointing to a damaged box. “That’s the only one that’s been recovered. Remarkably, it was recovered by a close friend who actually helped us clean up. He was on his way to Hamilton and found it laying on the side of the road on Rest Acres Road.”
On Thursday, it was the only remote-control truck recovered so far. There’s no guarantee any more will be recovered either.
But if Paris Junction Hobbies can guarantee one thing – there are far better hobbies than stealing.
