Police Recover ATMs, Safes: Machines Pulled From Neuse River
By Marti Maguire, The News & Observer, Raleigh, N.C.
May 4–The thieves who have been ripping ATM cash machines out of convenience stores and Bojangles’ restaurants with a pickup truck forced Johnston County authorities to do some creative maneuvering of their own Thursday.
Four Johnston County law enforcement agencies, two boats and an auto wrecker converged on Fire Department Road near Wilson’s Mills to drag two ATMs and two cash safes from the Neuse River.
The spot was near the home of Robert Blake Strother, 19, who was arrested Monday and charged with stealing an ATM from a Bojangles’ restaurant in Raleigh. Strother has since been charged by the Princeton police and the Wake County Sheriff’s Office with similar thefts.
Authorities knew by at least Tuesday about the ATMs in the river, but getting them out was another matter. In the end, a wrecker parked on the bridge plucked the mud-caked machines from the water as police assisted from boats.
“We knew they were there,” Clayton Police Chief Glen Allen said. “We just had to figure out how to get them.”
They also gathered a recovery team from the departments affected by the spree: police from Princeton, Clayton and Wilson’s Mills, along with sheriff’s deputies.
The machines will be taken to Princeton, Allen said, where serial numbers will be used to determine whether they are linked to any of a half-dozen recent ATM robberies. He said the machines had clearly been opened.
The operation, while difficult, did have one side benefit: “At least we got to salvage some debris from an endangered river,” Allen said.
Staff writer Marti Maguire can be reached at 829-4841 or marti.maguire@newsobserver.com.
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Copyright (c) 2007, The News & Observer, Raleigh, N.C.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
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