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Thieves use stolen JCB digger to rip out parking meters
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Thieves stole a JCB digger from a building site, smashed through
a fence and used the vehicle to wrench two parking meters out of
the ground and shake the coins out, police said today.
The culprits, thought to be two men, started up the mini-digger
after breaking into the site and finding it still had the key in
the ignition.
After smashing their way through the building site's perimeter
fence, they drove the digger to a car park down the road and used
it to wrench two pay and display parking meters out of the
ground.
They then drove with the meters to a nearby riverside, where they
used the digger to smash them and upend them to shake out about
£350 in coins.
The digger and one of the parking meters were dumped in the river
in St Albans, Hertfordshire, before the thieves made off.
The other parking meter was left on the river bank near the car
park in Holywell Hill.
Hertfordshire Police are investigating the incident, which is
believed to have occurred late on December 9 or in the early hours
of December 10.
Pc Ed Messinger said: "We think the process these offenders went
through would have proved quite noisy so someone must have heard or
seen something."
psmith
Commented 111 weeks ago
Hopefully they didn't retrieve credit card numbers and pins from the machines while they had them!