Meth head thief at its best(worst)

So some of you know I’m head of maintenance for a small school district in central Nebraska. The school was built in 07-08 and sits on 65 acres with one large building and then several practice fields, a softball field, typically track and football field. We’ve had a few small issues over the years with students making poor decisions, and even a couple of odd ball times of someone biking in the driveway and hiding in a pickup, presumably doing a drug deal‍♂️
It’s a fairly busy property with middle school, high school, and youth activities happening most days.

Last Sunday, there was a youth football game at 2:30 and the youth coach shows up in the morning to get everything out. He usually uses my school side by side to drag out yard markers, put up the flag, etc etc. Sunday he was there about 9:30 am and said my maint shop door was open and a guy was already on the side by side. He assumed he was doing work or planning something, so didn’t think much of it I guess. In fact, he approached the guy at one point and asked if the guy would be using the side by side long, to which he replied, “yeah, quite a while. Probably most of the day.” The coach shrugged it off as the guy was using my walking measuring wheel and measuring out in a far parking lot. Turns out he must of been on meth at the time, and I’m not sure he knew what he was doing at all. From watching security camera footage, he walking from the outside sports complex at 8:00am and didn’t leave the property until about 5:30, at which point he left in school van(stolen now). so he first wakes to my shop area where there’s a Kubota skid steer out, as usual, and after sometime, jumped in it and drove around for about 15 minutes, not hurting or doing anything really. He then popped the lock on a side door into my maint shop, which is a 24x40 post building on a slab foundation with two doors and an oh door. In there he messed with tons of stuff. Moving lots of weird stuff around. He then drove the side by side out and apparently, “measured” a bunch of stuff outside. Again, didn’t damage anything nor took anything of value, but moved little stuff around. Like he had grabbed two spark plugs, in boxes, off a shelf in the shop and I found the boxes in the back of the sxs and the plugs in the cup holders up front..‍♂️ Along with a outlet tester and some hair pin clips. Crazy stuff I tell ya. Eventually he put the sxs back next to my shop, closed the doors, and then went thru any vehicles be found unlocked, which, unfortunately, turned out to be several. He stole fuel cards, license & insurance papers, and some fire extinguishers I think. At some point he found keys in a 2016 town and country that our local auto shop has dropped off without our knowledge over the weekend. He decided it’d be better than “hoofing it” back home.

Amazingly, he came back two nights later in the same van, broke open a different door, and took about $5000 in tools from shop.

the good news is the van was found today, fairly un-damaged, and he was caught soon after. I feel bad for the young man. We knew who he was as he left his license and made sure to make plenty of good appearances on our security cameras.

hoping to get things back early next week and insurance have me the go ahead to buy whatever isn’t there.

Drugs suck. Hope and pray the kid can get clean and make a change for himself and his 7yo son.

 

so sad to hear this. He probably would be so ashamed of himself if he was in his right mind. I hope he gets help.