SHAWNEE, Kan. — Recent break-ins at a local storage facility have police on the lookout for suspects, and victims out hundreds of dollars.
“I parked my truck and trailer up at the place where I park my stuff, and came back the next morning to pick up my truck, and noticed that a lot of the garage doors on all the storage units were open,” said Paula McCollum, a victim of theft.
She owns a landscaping company and keeps her trailer and work tools at All-American Self-Storage in Shawnee.
“When we got around to my truck, the tool box was open, the truck had been kind of ransacked,” McCollum added, “I immediately called the police, because we figured out we had been robbed.”
“Overnight Saturday into Sunday morning, someone had broken into a storage facility and cut the locks on several lockers inside the storage unit,” said Major Doug Orbin with the Shawnee Police Department.
“And basically ravaged through each one of the storage units!” said Paula.
Major Orbin said they have a few leads and surveillance video, but they’re still interviewing the theft victims to find out exactly what was stolen.
“With a storage unit, or a storage facility, a lot of times we’ll have victims that are out of town, or they store their items for a long period of time, and sometimes when they look at a unit they might not realize what’s missing at the time until they go look for it later,” added Major Orbin.
“Slashed my tarp, and took two wheelbarrows and a scoop shovel,” said Paula, “I was lucky, I’m sure other people had more stolen.”
She says she keeps inventory and she’s thankful she doesn’t keep anything too valuable in storage. But after this incident, she recommends others have insurance like she did.
“File it with your insurance, you’re usually going to have a deductible that’s $1,000, well, if you don’t have $1,000 worth stolen, that’s money you’re out!” added Paula.
If you have any information on the break-ins, please contact the Shawnee Police Department.