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WEST VALLEY CITY -- West Valley police investigators say a foreclosed home was being used as a base to store stolen items. The house is located in the 3600 South block of Blackhawk Drive.
Doug Clark, who buys foreclosed homes, bought the house Wednesday. On Thursday morning, he went into the house and found a bunch of items that looked suspicious.
"There is a very nice scooter that has been dismantled," Clark said. "There is a lot of stereo equipment, two drum sets, numerous racing car parts, engine parts, lots of rims and wheels and tons of machinery."
The biggest item was a Ford F-350 pickup truck in the garage.
"It was an extremely nice truck in a ran-down, abandoned home, with no license plates. That was the part that really looked out of place," Clark said.
He called West Valley police. When investigators arrived, they talked to neighbors to try and find out who was using the house.
The neighbors told them they never saw anything suspicious. In fact, neighbors say they didn't know the house was a foreclosed house.
"Right now, we don't have any leads as to who might have done this," said West Valley police Lt. Bill Merritt. "We have several neighbors who told us they've seen people coming and going for the last couple of months, and they actually thought they lived here."
Detectives ran the truck through a database and found out it had been stolen out of the parking lot of a Sandy gym this past May. They also found the previous owner of the truck.
Steve Almond arrived at the West Valley house and couldn't believe the truck he was looking at was his.
"I didn't ... I absolutely didn't think I would ever see it again," Almond said. "I thought it would have been stripped because it's a killer truck, and it's in pretty good shape. It looks like somebody goofed around with the motor and didn't know what they were dealing with."
Almond filed a claim with his insurance company after the truck was stolen. He received a check for it but would love to buy it back.
"They own the property now, so it's up to them if they want to sell it back to me or take it and scrap it. It's a salvage title now, but I'd like the truck back. I mean, I bought another one, but it's not as good as that one," Almond said.
Investigators are going through all the items in the house and garage to try and figure out what's stolen and what might have just been left behind from the previous homeowner.
"Most people don't take time to write down their serial numbers on their property, and therefore, when it gets stolen, we have no way to track it," Merritt said.
A forensics team took fingerprints samples from the items to try and find out who was handling them. If they can't determine what was stolen, the items will be given to Clark.
"My responsibility is that I will manage and store everything the police don't take," Clark said. "We will store it and keep it, and if somebody comes back for it, fantastic. But eventually, we'll consider it junk and get rid of it through the normal channels."
E-mail: acabrero@ksl.com
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