Front-Lawn Statue Thieves Caught with a GPS Tracker
20 Mar 2012Baltimore County has recently seen an increasing number of gutters, downspouts, and copper wire thefts from homes. But they’ve also seen a rise in the theft of another unique homeowners property: statures from front lawns.
All of these thefts apparently are due to the rising cost of metals, whereby would-be criminals steal the objects to obtain cash for scrap metal.
Investigators found out about the statue thieves when a neighbor videotaped two offenders failing to stuff a neighbor’s large bronze statue into a compact Silver Honda Civic car. The thieves were trying to steal a 6-foot tall bronze boy and his kite lawn statue, which couldn’t quite fit into the small Civic.
This was just one day after two monkey lawn statues were reported stolen from the same house. In this case, the thieves were able to successfully steal two 50-pound primate statues — part of the three part set — “”Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil and See No Evil.” The thieves were able to take the “Hear No Evil” and “Speak No Evil” statues, but for some reason left the “See No Evil” statue behind.
Thanks to a neighbor videotaping the attempted boy and kite statue theft — along with capturing the make, model, color, and all-important license plate number of the silver Honda Civic — authorities were able to locate the vehicle.
After obtaining a warrant, police attached a Global Positional System tracking device on the vehicle. Investigators were able to track the car to a metal recycling plant, where they were able to match receipts to the suspect for pawning of metal grounding plates and wires — thus linking the suspect to other thefts around the state. The police also found the monkey statues at the metal recycling yard. The suspect was charged with burglary, theft, attempted theft.
Fortunately, the proud owners of the monkey lawn statues got their lawn art back before it was melted down. But the monkey statues weren’t the only lawn statues stolen. A nearby homeowner had her front lawn ballerina statue stolen as well. She too, got her statue back.
