‘It’s gone’: Homeowner captures brazen theft of off-road vehicle on camera

CTV’s Jeff Keele has more on thieves stealing a trailer and off-road vehicle, with the entire incident caught on camera.

In just three minutes, thieves dragged Paul Bulawka’s trailer and off-road vehicle away in the middle of the night.

“Too easy,” he said. “They knew what they were going to do.”

The trailer and side-by-side, which is like a modern-day dune buggy, were parked behind Bulawka’s work truck on the street in front of his house in St. Adolphe. Late Sunday morning, Bulawka was returning home from St. Malo. He came around the corner towards his house and he knew right away something was wrong.

“I was like, ‘Holy smokes, I don’t see the machine,’” said Bulawka. “So we got closer and I was like, ‘Yeah, it’s gone.’”

He started investigating and checked his doorbell camera footage. It captured the entire theft.

You can see two trucks pull up around 4 a.m. One driver backs a truck up near the back of the trailer and ties a rope to it. He then gets back in his truck and pulls the entire trailer off the block it was resting on. This makes just enough room for the other driver to back in to the front of the trailer and hook it to his truck hitch. They take off in a matter of seconds.

“It doesn’t look that easy until you see it and it is. One truck pulled it out of the way, the other truck backed in, they were both noisy, one was a diesel truck, the other one dragged it so it was making a lot of noise.”

Despite that noise, no one heard a thing.

The St. Adolphe homeowner says he is relieved they didn’t take his boat too. Still, with cameras everywhere these days, he can’t believe how brazen the thieves were.

“Pissed, a lot of money and effort put into the machine,” said Bulawka. “You know my kid, her and I, it was our thing, and where we live, I mean, you just drive right out of the garage and go.”

RCMP is investigating the incident.