West Seattle Crime Watch: Metal thieves/’scavengers’ again?

| Crime | Gatewood | West Seattle news

From KV:

After reading through the blog it seems like these might be the same people that struck other neighborhoods. I live in the Gatewood neighborhood between Holden and Kenyon. Older model loud blue pickup with two men stopped pickup in alley, one African American male and one Caucasian male, got out and walked into neighbor carport. The whole back of the pickup was full of large metal items and they looked through the neighbors whole carport and stole fencing and other pieces of miscellaneous metal. The pair was stopped by another neighbor further down the block when they were found in the backyard looking around another neighbor’s yard. They said they were looking for scrap metal, but were going to ask permission before they took anything. This time, one of the people was actually around the front and side of the house and it is unclear what they were doing.

Cheryl July 7, 2010 (7:16 am)

I don’t understand why people see this kind of thing & don’t call SPD. Is it because they think the police won’t come? Man, if my neighbors saw some shady dudes on/near my property rifling through my things I sure hope they’d stop gawking & just call 911 (I would for them!).

Ken July 7, 2010 (9:58 am)

Cheryl, I agree totally — I’m not someone who gets paranoid every time someone I don’t know walks down my street, but that kind of behavior is definitely out of bounds.

KV July 7, 2010 (10:41 am)

I was the one that sent in the information about the metal thieves. I called 911 as fast as I could, so I wasn’t just gawking! I just reported it here for other people’s information! The police came about 2 minutes after they left the alley, so we are hoping they maybe found them somewhere in the area.

MAS July 7, 2010 (10:58 am)

Saw these guys this weekend, plus a small yellow pickup doing the same thing. The blue pickup was cruising the alley, asked if I had scrap, left when I said no. I suspect that if I’d not been out in the back yard they might have helped themselves.

Time for an alley cam to back up all of the other video capture on the property. With the various door to door sales folks, people leaving “fliers”, phone books, collection bags and other trash in my yard, it’s getting hard to determine which litterers/trespassers/thieves are up to no good, and which ones are just being really annoying.

homedk July 7, 2010 (2:20 pm)

In case the following is helpful, a few days ago I noticed a strange blue truck quickly drive through our alley in the Hansen View (part of Fairmount) neighborhood. I didn’t see the occupants do anything, but the truck had a random assortment of metal items in the back that looked like they had been quickly tossed in. I was in the middle of a business call at the time, so didn’t note the license plate or get a good look at the occupants.
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But, I did notice that the truck was not a typical pick-up; it looked like a modified flatbed truck. The bed portion was black & the cab was a very bright blue. When it turned the corner, I noticed that from the side the truck looked half blue/half black — very distinctive from a distance.