Steel thieves caught in the act
The truck, belonging to the Cork Metal Company, was parked at the Commons Inn while its driver went for lunch yesterday.
It was full of steel and stainless steel, both of which have become particularly valuable commodities in recent months.
The men had driven a small truck into the Commons Inn car park and started piling the steel into it.
Unfortunately for them, at the same time Superintendent Con Cadogan and Sergeant Brian O’Donovan were driving past in a car.
It didn’t take long for them to realise that this unloading process looked more than a bit unusual.
So they immediately drove into the car park and confronted the three men, taking the precaution to call for back-up in the meantime, which arrived in the form of patrol cars from Gurranabraher and Mayfield.
Sergeant O’Donovan arrested the three men at the scene and they were taken to Gurranabraher Garda Station for questioning. They were being detained under Section 4 of the Criminal Justice Act.
Two of the men are in their 20s and the third is in his 40s. All three have addresses on the northside of Cork city.
There has been a huge surge in the theft of scrap metal in recent months by gangs operating throughout Co Cork.
In west Cork alone it has been estimated that hundreds of thousands of euro worth of metal has been stolen over the past year.
Thieves have stripped vacant buildings of copper, which is particularly valuable.
They have also stolen cable from ESB depots, later melting off the plastic covering to get at the metal inside.
Cheekily, they have even cut down telephone wires, again to extract the metal from inside the plastic covering.
Gardaí believe that the upsurge in such thefts is linked to an illegal trade in metals which are being shipped to China to fuel that country’s booming economic growth.
