$70,000 worth of catalytic converters stolen in a matter of minutes
By Kourtney Williams
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METAIRIE, Louisiana (WDSU) — A Metairie business was struck by thieves and it was all caught on camera.
The owner of Garden Doctors says catalytic converters were stolen from five of his trucks.
“We worked hard to purchase these new trucks and just to have someone come into our yard and commit this crime is just mind-boggling to me,” said Nathanael Scales.
Scales told WDSU four of the vehicles were just delivered 24 hours prior.
WDSU obtained surveillance video which shows one of the suspects walking up to the truck, going underneath with a flashlight and moments later he walks away with the catalytic converter in hand.
“It’s a struggle every day and to have something just taken from you, it’s just it’s very heartbreaking to me and now it’s starting up start all over again and picking up the pieces to the puzzle and just trying to move forward,” Scales said.
Scales says this isn’t the first time this has happened. But this time the price tag to replace the converters is about $70,000. That doesn’t include the cost of the trucks being off the road.
“They’re worth a lot of money at the junkyard. It’ll cost us the average of $12 to $15,000 per truck to fix something that they’re only going to receive a few hundred dollars for,” Scales said.
Leading up to the incident scales says he put in a request for JPSO to monitor the area as they’ve done in the past. However, he doesn’t know what happened this time and now he’s left to pick up the pieces.
“It put us out of business for some time because now the parts are on backorder, we can’t afford to be shut down,” Scales said.
I reached out to JPSO, and they said this incident is still under investigation.
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