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DAVIS COUNTY — A business owner is out $6,000 worth of tools after a thief broke into his work trailer and stole most of his tools. Now deputies are hoping the cold weather might provide a lead in the case.
Jonathan Arrington, a general contractor in Davis County, showed up at a job site Saturday morning to find a sheriff's deputy investigating his trailer. There was a fresh layer of snow on the ground and a set of footprints circling the trailer.
"He asked me to step in the snow to see my footprint," Arrington said. "(The deputy) said, ‘Oh, it's not you.' I said, ‘What's going on?'"
Arrington soon found out the trailer was broken into and most of the tools he needed for work — including framing nail guns, coiling nailers, saws and drills — were gone.
Sheriff's deputies got word of the problem after a neighbor reported something suspicious.
"Residents contacted the sheriff's office and suggested that they had a suspicious set of footprints that was sort of walking around her vehicle," said Davis County Sheriff's Sgt. Susan Poulsen. "They felt like a person was casing the vehicle."
Poulsen said the deputy followed the trail and found a burglarized car, and then Arrington's trailer.
"The footprints then led off to another location, where deputies believe that the suspect had gotten into a vehicle and drove off," she said.
For now, Arrington says he can get by with what he has left — but soon, the theft is going to cost him a pretty penny. He said he'll have to replace those for a job by the end of the month.
"You know, I gotta pay my insurance deductible," Arrington said. "And my insurance deductible's almost $5,000, so I'm gonna get $1,000 bucks to replace all my tools.
Of course, his hope is that detectives will catch up with the thief before he has to shell out the cash.
"It's my livelihood. It's what I made my money with, is my tools," Arrington said. "If I don't have my tools, I can't make my money,"
Detectives are already following some promising leads, but anyone with information about the burglary is asked to call the Davis County Sheriff's Office at 801-451-4100.
