Copper worth $120,000 stripped by thieves in South Bend building

February 06, 2012|By Colleen Ferreira (cferreira@wsbt.com), Click here to follow Colleen on Twitter | By Colleen Ferreira (cferreira@wsbt.com), Click here to follow Colleen on Twitter

SOUTH BEND — Copper thieves strike again. Police said someone hit a vacant building on Nimtz Parkway in late January, stripping the entire building of its copper wiring.

Our source said about a $120,000 worth of copper was stolen. He said the thieves probably got around 20 to $30,000 for it at the scrap yard.

The aftermath of the copper robbery was graphic. The wiring was completely cut out of the machinery at the Bowne Printing Company in South Bend.

WSBT was told another printing company R.R. Donnelley bought out the Bowne building on Nimtz Parkway in early 2011. They phased out the employees and closed the place down in the fall of 2011, so the building has been vacant since that time.

Most recently, a former employee of Bowne came to check up on the place on January 26. That worker, who now works with R.R. Donnelley, noticed one of the doors to Bowne was halfway open when he arrived on property. He called police and that’s when they discovered the copper thefts.

Police said it was mostly copper taken, but some other metal and wiring as well.

R.R. Donnelley is a financial printing company based out of Chicago. They declined to comment on these thefts, but an employee who used to work at Bowne tells us it's unfortunate someone would strip this entire building of its wiring.

Police don't have any leads in this case mainly because no one witnessed the burglary and there was no surveillance video.

But police said in the past year and a half, copper and scrap metal thefts have increased mainly because of copper prices. They say any vacant building is at risk of these kinds of thefts.

Police said it's always been an attractive crime and in the recession it was a huge problem, then it died down. But in these past few years they have seen the problem become worse.

We don't know what security was like on the property before the thefts happened, but while WSBT was out there on Monday, there was a security guard on the property.

|

|

|