The quick-thinking employees at an Akron car lot noticed a man breaking into one of their cars and used a forklift to suspend the car and alleged thief about 20 feet in the air until police arrived and arrested him.
Akron Police were called out to the car lot on Arlington Street on the afternoon of Oct. 17, according to the police report. There, they met the manager, who told them he was walking through the scrapyard when he noticed the alleged thief in the back of a car.
The manager and his team used a forklift to raise the car into the air and waited for officers to arrive.
With police on the scene, the car was lowered, and the 26-year-old suspect was placed under arrest. Officers searched his backpack and found a Sawzall cutting tool, blades and other hand tools, the report states.
The man was arrested for criminal trespass and possessing criminal tools.
“We’re having a lot of trouble here with people stealing stuff and everything and we got a guy that’s passed out or crashed in one of our vehicles in our yard and I got the vehicle picked up with the loader and he’s probably 20 feet in the air now and I refuse to drop this thing to let him out and run,” one employee told police, according to a report from then Akron-Beacon Journal. “I mean, we’ve just had so much (sic) problems here with theft and catalytic converters and just fires and everything.”
After he was arrested, the man admitted to police that he brought the tools to procure copper from the junkyard’s cars, the ABJ reports.
“He broke into a car at the junkyard and before he could get out, he’s done it before, they got, like, the forklift and they had him, like, I’m not kidding, like, 20 feet off the ground," one officer can be heard telling his colleagues after returning to the station. "So, when we got there, he went right into custody."
