Gas siphoning
by
Gas is hard to find and if you can find it, prices are sky high.
Police in LaVergne said that could be the reason why there has been a growing number of gasoline siphoning reports.
Just how low are gas thieves?
Carrie Wheeler can tell you first hand.
Wheeler owns Just Like Home day care in LaVergne
“What is this big blue thing?” I ask.
She smiles looking at her school bus painted blue.
“It’s the cool blue bus. Not a school bus, but a cool bus.”
Wheeler tells me that every afternoon, her day care picks up 24 kids from four area schools, bringing them to the facility where they work on art projects and do homework under a veil of supervision.
“Yesterday, we went to pick up the kids,” she said. “But the driver said we need fuel.”
Wheeler said she noticed the gas cap was missing.
“We were highly upset.”
That was the tip of the ice berg.
While at the pumps, down the street, she began gassing up. Every drop of fuel pours onto the ground.
“What the …,” Wheeler says out loud.
“This is the hose that was severed in two,” Wheeler showed me, holding up the rubber hose that has been almost surgically severed.
“They are taking from kids… from innocent children.”
She is pulsing with anger as she tells me how low down dirty gas thieves crawled under the big blue bus in the dead of night and then cut the fuel line, draining the tank.
“I am highly upset. Yesterday I was fired up,” she continued. “…The fact that they took the time and they had the tools in their vehicle to do this!”
She is fuming just thinking about it.
“We contacted the police and they say this is going on. They are taking from kids. They are taking from innocent children. That is the thing. I think it is Messed Up because it affects the children. If we could not pick them up how would they get home? Parents would have to leave home to pick up their kids because we could not provide safe transportation for them. That is Messed Up right there. Stealing in general is Messed Up, but it is hard in the world today, but to take from children, that is Messed Up right there.”
According to LaVergne police, gas stealing is a crime that is growing.
Stace Thompson is a captain on the LaVergne Police Department.
“Nobody saw anything, and we have little visual evidence to go on,” the handle bar mustachioed cop tells me. “Sadly, no one is immune.”
He rolls his eyes with a slight smile.
Not even a police captain.
“What happened to you?” I ask.
“Someone got my lawn mower after I mowed the grass.”
“They stole your gas?”
“I’m afraid so, Andy.”
“So these low down dirty scoundrels, they are bold enough to go to the captain of the LaVergne Police Department’s house and steal gas from his lawn mower? What does that say?”
“Gas is a precious commodity,” he says.
Thompson says protect yourself as best you can.
Be vigilant, watch out for your neighbors, and get a locking gas cap.
How to stop a thief who will go under your vehicle and steal gas out of your tank that way?
I guess you need a pit bull chained to your axel.
What do you think?
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