HVAC was pillaged

After nineteen years of living in our neighborhood in peace and quiet, we got either vandalized or robbed, depending on how you look at it. Some hoodlums came up to the house, found our very nice combination furnace/AC unit and ripped it apart.



They took all the copper out of the system to sell as scrap. The HVAC repair guy's estimate was about $30-40 in scrap. The cost to replace the unit, about $3600. I would have felt better if they had just unbolted the whole unit and taken it. At least they might get more the $30.



With things like this, if you don't catch them in the act or have a clear suspect, you can figure that even the CSI television cops wouldn't catch the thieves. Not so here! It turns out that they did this to a bunch of houses out in Wake County. The police had some suspects, but couldn't locate them. Then the suspects got pulled over for something in Franklin County and the Wake arrest warrants showed up.

One guy decided to cooperate and drove around with the police to show them where they had robbed. Our house was one of them.

The bad guys are now facing 26 felonies for Wake County, with more likely from Raleigh, Cary, and other counties. Bond is already $400,000 and is expected to rise.

No big surprise, but you can guess that guys who commit felonies for $30 each are very unlikely to ever have any money for restitution.