Surveillance video captures daylight theft at Provo towing company


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PROVO — Police and the owner of a towing company were hoping Friday to identify two men caught on surveillance video stealing three engine cylinder heads.

Universal Towing & Recovery owner Roger Groom said the theft of the cylinder heads, which weigh between 60 and 100 pounds apiece and were sitting outside Groom’s business at 1135 S. Industrial Parkway, took place just before 9 a.m. Monday.

“I had to sit back and watch it a couple of times, thinking, 'Are they really that brave?’” Groom exclaimed. “I thought, ‘How could they be this crazy?’”

The video shows the two yet-to-be-identified men pulling up in what appears to be a large, silver Ford pickup truck, and then getting out, casually walking over and picking up the engine cylinder heads, and placing them in the back of the truck before driving away less than two minutes later.

“I’m like, you know, ‘This is getting ridiculous.’ You know, you can’t even leave a cylinder head sitting outside without somebody coming up and taking it,” Groom said. “It still amazes me – broad daylight.”

Groom estimated the suspected thieves left just 15 minutes before he showed up to work.

The cylinder heads had a combined value of about $4,500, Groom estimated.

“They’re very high in value, or they could be using them as scrap metal and selling them just for the scrap metal weight of it,” said Provo police officer Nisha King, who responded to the initial call.

Surveillance video captures daylight theft at Provo towing company

King said detectives were reviewing the surveillance video and had already pulled a partial plate number from it.

“Just because something’s laying out in front of a business doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s free to pick up and take,” King said. “We definitely want to catch these gentlemen that were involved in this theft.”

Groom, who has analyzed the video over and over, said a chrome brush guard across the front of the truck and a Harley Davidson sticker in the back window are other potentially identifying features.

He hopes somebody will recognize the men or the truck and call police.

“It’s frustration that the world has come to this, you know – that people just pull up and think they can take what they want because it’s not bolted down,” Groom said.

Anybody with information is asked to call the Provo Police Department at 801-852-6210.

Update: (7/1/2016) Following the publication of this story, Richard Groom offered the following statement to clarify misconceptions expressed in the comments:

My towing company does not do parking enforcement or booting. We have only done five since opening our doors and if the owner contacted us quickly we only charged the $50 for a standard tow. Usually we don’t have to tow as we sit with our lights on waiting for an owner to appear. We are not making an insurance claim for the theft. $4,500 was replacement cost. All three were diesel and the two smaller had the injectors and valves. The other was only available from the dealer and had to come from Japan. The heads were outside to be taken to a machine shop. I did not know if the shop would come by and get them but I planned to take them that Monday morning. The other head, had they asked, I would have let them have it, as well as about another 1000 lbs of metal that I have inside the shop.

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