An alert Porter
County Sheriff’s Police officer recovered many thousands of dollars worth of
stolen tools following a traffic stop on I-94 on Wednesday, Feb. 18, the
PCSP said.
According to
police, at 10:52 a.m. Cpl. Paul Czupryn was on patrol in the westbound lanes
of I-94 when, near the 18 mile marker, he clocked a minivan at 81 miles per
hour in a zone posted at 70 mph. On making contact with the driver--a
49-year-old South Bend man--Czupryn noted that the minivan “was sagging as
if it were heavily loaded,” then observed that its rear seats were missing,
that “whatever was loaded in the back of the van was covered with numerous
blankets,” and that “sticking out from underneath the blanket:” was a
cordless drill.
In talking with the
driver and his two passengers, Czupryn determined that the three were having
a hard time getting their story straight. The first passenger, 47-year-old
South Bend man, said they were going to Chicago because “his auntie had
died” and they needed “to assist with funeral arrangements”; the second
passenger, a a 28-year-old Chicago man, said they were going to Chicago to
visit the BMV “so he could get a new license.” The driver, for his part,
said “they were en route to Chicago for the rear-seat passenger” but was
unable to name the passenger, as they’d only known each other for “a couple
of weeks.”
Then, on securing
the driver’s permission to search the minivan, Czupryn discovered that,
beneath the blankets, was an “astounding” number of tools: power tools, hand
tools, and specialty tools. “Many of the drills still had bits in them and
the saws all appeared to have blades still in them, Czupryn stated in his
report. “The buckets and bags of tools looked as if they’d just been taken
off of a job site.”
Meanwhile, Czupryn
was advised by the dispatcher that the three subjects in question have “a
long history of theft/possession of stolen property/robbery charges.”
Czupryn’s next move
was to contact the South Bend PD in an effort to determine whether there’d
been any recent reported work-site thefts. The SBPD sent him to the Berrien
County, Mich., Sheriff’s Police said, which sent him to the St. Joseph
County Sheriff’s Police, which had nothing for him. The SBPD, however,
called back later and referred him to the Mishawaka PD, which informed
Czupryn “that during the overnight hours a number of construction vehicles
had been broken into at area hotels.”
Czupryn
subsequently obtained the MPD case reports and found that “nearly every
single item” reported stolen by the seven victimized construction and
contracting firms “matched” the tools recovered in the minivan.
The minivan was
impounded and placed into evidence, the three subjects were released at the
scene, and the PCSP is requesting warrants be issued for their arrest on a
charge of possession of stolen property.
Czupryn estimated
the total value of the stolen tools at “tens of thousands of dollars.”