Construction Equipment Crooks Target Hialeah Gardens Firm
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MIAMI (CBSMiami) - Caught on camera - three crooks who stole nearly a half a million dollars worth of construction equipment from a Hialeah Gardens firm.
Surveillance from the Mears Construction Co. shows them making their way onto the property at 120th Street and NW 98th Avenue. The company's Rick Diaz said the break-in occurred Sunday afternoon between 3:30 p.m. and 4:30 p.m.
A short time later they're seen driving off with two trucks carrying backhoes.
"We were shocked to you the truth, we were extremely upset," said Diaz.
On the video, Diaz said you see a man with a hoodie running onto the property first followed by a second guy, who was holding some sort of bag, who stood out.
"What's interesting in the video is that you can see that the gentleman has a very distinct walk, he shakes his hand back and forth, which is normally not normal, if someone recognizes that you can point that out," said Diaz.
He points out that whoever the men were, they knew what they were doing.
"In order to move the vehicles they would have had to break in the door and somehow hotwire the ignition," said Diaz. "Besides that, inside we have a sonar system. They'd had to go inside the panel and disconnect the zone tracking device."
About an hour later you see two dump trucks attached to trailers caring backhoes taking off. Diaz said he believes this was an inside job.
"They had the gate code. We do believe that it could be one of our vendors, one of our contractors, we have several contractors coming to the job to provide service," said Diaz. "They had to have the code, there was no break-in."
Diaz said he noticed on the tape that there was someone, or several people, inside an older, model dark colored Cadillac SRX which seemed to be keeping watch while the burglary took place.
"It's really devastating. We trust our employees, our contractors, and provide a lot of work to employees in the county," he said.
Anyone with information on the theft is urged to call Miami-Dade Crime Stoppers at (305) 471-TIPS.