PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — For the second time this month, an excavator has been stolen off a local job site.
The dirt digging machines weigh tens of thousands of pounds, so it’s not an easy task to grab one and go. However, over the weekend, Washington County Sheriff’s Deputies followed on foot a slow-moving excavator driven by a thief at a job site near Banks.
The man drove about half a mile before he finally stopped. The thief was reportedly already wanted for car theft and other charges.
The owner of Tigard construction company UWB Prebuild told KOIN 6 she had an excavator stolen from a job site in SE Portland earlier this month. A nearby neighbor told her she saw someone drive up with a flatbed truck one morning, and the excavator was driven off the property and hauled away. The neighbor assumed it was part of a work crew.
The equipment’s owner, Kimberly Caminschi, thinks it’s the work of professionals.
“[It’s] somebody who maybe does this a lot and planned it. The tracking unit hasn’t responded so we are going to assume that they also disabled that,” she said.
The site did have a fence and lock on it along SE Flavel and 75th. Caminschi said the excavator is worth about 150,000.
“When this happens, it’s a hard hit,” Caminschi said.