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Friday morning, my day off, I get a call around 10am asking me to come into work. I get dressed and head to our yard to see a big mess. There's a couple of police cars and most of our trucks parked outside have all of the tool boxes open. We had been burglarized about 1am Friday morning. They cut the chain on our gate, went in and went through all of the tool boxes on our work trucks and even tried to get into personal vehicles. They then got into our shop which we had two trucks parked in there, but only one was there when we showed up. They found the keys to our service truck which was stacked full of tools, they also grabbed as many tools out of our shop and loaded them onto the truck, and then took off with the whole truck.
Here's how we found the trucks outside
Tim's personal truck
Move on into the shop and you can see where they went through the service truck
Here's the other truck that was in the shop
The police had found where the truck was taken to, about 5 miles from our shop. The criminals had unloaded all of the tools into a pile, covered them with a green tarp and then covered that with some bushes. Not good enough since they went down a bumpy gravel road and lost a trail of tools the whole way. Here's what the police had gathered up that was scattered all over the road.
And here's where they had stashed everything
Now onto the good part...the truck. It was seen the night before being driven off a cliff into the Columbia River in Dallesport, WA. Here's where it went off
The sheriff's department had located the truck with their depth finder at about 50 feet. They sent divers down to make sure there were no bodies inside and to get a good look at it. The truck was sitting on the edge of a shelf where with the right movement it would fall another 120 feet. Since there is a truck with over 100 gallons of diesel that is sitting on the bottom of the river, things got real complicated. Everyone was getting involved now. We had spill control, NRC which is some sort of environmental control deal, 3 different police departments including tribal, and even more guys that I didn't know who they were sent from. A simple snatch and grab job turned into a full day job.
Here is NRC setting up their spill control
The next step was to get the divers in
They showed up, had their safety meeting/game plan and then sent their diver down with two chains. The plan was to attach one chain on each side of the front axle, and use two cables to pull it up nice and straight. Here they are getting the chains ready to be sent down
The diver made short work of it and was back to the surface in a matter of minutes
As soon as they started to pull the truck up, we noticed that the lines were tangled which means we couldn't pull it up because the truck would most likely spin on us. So they dropped the truck back down and had to send the diver back down to straighten everything out. With the cold wind blowing, I sat in my truck and waited.
About a half hour later things got straightened out and we were going to lift again. Truck seemed to be coming up fairly easy. At first, I had doubts that this truck was going to be able to get it out.
But wait, the truck had rotated and now has the wheels away from the rocks. There's no way that that will work, but they kept trying :roll:
Once the cab was completely crushed on the rocks, the tow truck driver (complete idiot) decided that he wasn't going to be able to get it now that the truck had rolled over on him. The truck had rolled due to bad rigging by the diver. The diver didn't hook the chains correctly, which cause the chains to slide together making it very easy for the truck to roll in either direction. Getting late in the day we all started making phone calls to try and get a crane, about the 5th phone call and we had one on the way from White Salmon. He said he'd be there in 45 minutes.
Here's how we left things while waiting for the crane. Sorry for the sideways pictures, I forgot to rotate them before uploading.
Back to my truck I went while waiting for the crane. About an hour later he pulled in
The crane needed to sit where the tow truck was sitting so for the second time they had to let the truck back down to the bottom of the river, cut it loose, and then send the diver in again to connect the crane.
Set into place and ready to work
After a short time they had the crane connected and we started to lift. Same story as before, the chains were together and the truck spun freely. Not as much of a problem this time since we were able to boom out away from the rocks.
This machine pulled it up with a fair amount of ease. Not bad for having to lift a 15,000+ lb truck.
He swung the crane a little and got it to straighten out to where the wheels were pointed towards the rocks.
But that quickly changed
It took some work to get it coming up the way we wanted
And we ended up having one of the tow trucks run a cable to the other side of the axle to hold tension to keep it straight.
After juggling it a little bit to keep the axle and bumper from hanging up on the rocks, we finally got it coming up.
Figured I should get some proof that I was there lol
And flopped it over onto its wheels
Cab well crushed from the amateur towing company
We pulled it further up onto land and got things secured. Here you can see where they tied the steering wheel. They had put it in gear and let it drive itself off the cliff.
We then repositioned the crane so we could lift it and set it on our trailer.
Now onto the best part. All of our trucks have DriveCam in them. DriveCam is a company that supplies you with a camera that is impact sensitive. If you hit a large bump, come to an abrupt stop, any kind of impact makes the camera record. It is always rolling but only saves data once it is triggered. It saves 10 seconds before the impact and 10 seconds after the impact, and then sends the video clip to DriveCam's office. The crooks had gotten into the truck and were going through everything inside when one of them noticed the camera mounted on the windshield
He then grabbed the camera and tried to pull it off. Him grabbing the camera cause it to start recording, which gave us a great 10 second clip of him before the grabbed the camera. Thanks for hanging yourself buddy
Within hours of seeing the video, the police knew who it was and now have a warrant out for his arrest.
Here's how we found the trucks outside
Tim's personal truck
Move on into the shop and you can see where they went through the service truck
Here's the other truck that was in the shop
The police had found where the truck was taken to, about 5 miles from our shop. The criminals had unloaded all of the tools into a pile, covered them with a green tarp and then covered that with some bushes. Not good enough since they went down a bumpy gravel road and lost a trail of tools the whole way. Here's what the police had gathered up that was scattered all over the road.
And here's where they had stashed everything
Now onto the good part...the truck. It was seen the night before being driven off a cliff into the Columbia River in Dallesport, WA. Here's where it went off
The sheriff's department had located the truck with their depth finder at about 50 feet. They sent divers down to make sure there were no bodies inside and to get a good look at it. The truck was sitting on the edge of a shelf where with the right movement it would fall another 120 feet. Since there is a truck with over 100 gallons of diesel that is sitting on the bottom of the river, things got real complicated. Everyone was getting involved now. We had spill control, NRC which is some sort of environmental control deal, 3 different police departments including tribal, and even more guys that I didn't know who they were sent from. A simple snatch and grab job turned into a full day job.
Here is NRC setting up their spill control
The next step was to get the divers in
They showed up, had their safety meeting/game plan and then sent their diver down with two chains. The plan was to attach one chain on each side of the front axle, and use two cables to pull it up nice and straight. Here they are getting the chains ready to be sent down
The diver made short work of it and was back to the surface in a matter of minutes
As soon as they started to pull the truck up, we noticed that the lines were tangled which means we couldn't pull it up because the truck would most likely spin on us. So they dropped the truck back down and had to send the diver back down to straighten everything out. With the cold wind blowing, I sat in my truck and waited.
About a half hour later things got straightened out and we were going to lift again. Truck seemed to be coming up fairly easy. At first, I had doubts that this truck was going to be able to get it out.
But wait, the truck had rotated and now has the wheels away from the rocks. There's no way that that will work, but they kept trying :roll:
Once the cab was completely crushed on the rocks, the tow truck driver (complete idiot) decided that he wasn't going to be able to get it now that the truck had rolled over on him. The truck had rolled due to bad rigging by the diver. The diver didn't hook the chains correctly, which cause the chains to slide together making it very easy for the truck to roll in either direction. Getting late in the day we all started making phone calls to try and get a crane, about the 5th phone call and we had one on the way from White Salmon. He said he'd be there in 45 minutes.
Here's how we left things while waiting for the crane. Sorry for the sideways pictures, I forgot to rotate them before uploading.
Back to my truck I went while waiting for the crane. About an hour later he pulled in
The crane needed to sit where the tow truck was sitting so for the second time they had to let the truck back down to the bottom of the river, cut it loose, and then send the diver in again to connect the crane.
Set into place and ready to work
After a short time they had the crane connected and we started to lift. Same story as before, the chains were together and the truck spun freely. Not as much of a problem this time since we were able to boom out away from the rocks.
This machine pulled it up with a fair amount of ease. Not bad for having to lift a 15,000+ lb truck.
He swung the crane a little and got it to straighten out to where the wheels were pointed towards the rocks.
But that quickly changed
It took some work to get it coming up the way we wanted
And we ended up having one of the tow trucks run a cable to the other side of the axle to hold tension to keep it straight.
After juggling it a little bit to keep the axle and bumper from hanging up on the rocks, we finally got it coming up.
Figured I should get some proof that I was there lol
And flopped it over onto its wheels
Cab well crushed from the amateur towing company
We pulled it further up onto land and got things secured. Here you can see where they tied the steering wheel. They had put it in gear and let it drive itself off the cliff.
We then repositioned the crane so we could lift it and set it on our trailer.
Now onto the best part. All of our trucks have DriveCam in them. DriveCam is a company that supplies you with a camera that is impact sensitive. If you hit a large bump, come to an abrupt stop, any kind of impact makes the camera record. It is always rolling but only saves data once it is triggered. It saves 10 seconds before the impact and 10 seconds after the impact, and then sends the video clip to DriveCam's office. The crooks had gotten into the truck and were going through everything inside when one of them noticed the camera mounted on the windshield
He then grabbed the camera and tried to pull it off. Him grabbing the camera cause it to start recording, which gave us a great 10 second clip of him before the grabbed the camera. Thanks for hanging yourself buddy
Within hours of seeing the video, the police knew who it was and now have a warrant out for his arrest.
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