Court Docs: Suspicious van spotted at previous incident at 29th Ave construction | Crime

Police arrested a man for theft last week after he was caught stealing pipes and tools from a prominent construction site on the South Hill.

Neighbors alerted police on the evening of August 28 when they saw a suspicious man loading a variety of pipes and tools into a white van near the intersection of 29th and Manito Blvd. That stretch of roadway was shut down earlier this summer for a rehabilitation project.

The subject was seen closing the back of the van and preparing to leave when officers responded to the scene just before 7 p.m. Andrews told officers was picking up scrap pipes to recycle and “didn’t realize” it was illegal to take scrap material from construction sites.

Officers seized the white van while they acquired a search warrant for the vehicle. Inside they found the stolen materials that Andrews said he picked up that day.

Court documents explain the stolen material, including pipes and tools, was estimated by the contractor employee to be worth about $850.

Another employee saw a similar van at the construction site on August 14 when it was parked near a pile of metal pipes. A man was spotted loading the metal into the back of a van also occupied by a woman.

Detectives in the investigation say the recorded license plate for that van matched the plate for the seized van used in the August 28 incident.

This story is an expanded version of another story published on August 29.