CHARLOTTETOWN, P.E.I. — The owner of a local construction company is hoping someone can help locate material he said was stolen from a work site over the weekend.
Shane Smith, owner of Friends Renovations, said he and his crew started a job on the corner of Weymouth and Richmond streets in Charlottetown on Jan. 25.
Because the sun was shining that day, lots of people were walking and driving by the site and commenting on the work they were doing. Smith said he didn’t think twice about it, as that happened all the time.
When they returned the next morning, about 1,200 pounds of nine-foot black sheet metal that was to be used to renovate the roof was gone.
Smith said while the material was left at the site overnight, it wasn’t visible from the street.
“It was tucked away in between the two buildings,” he told The Guardian on Jan. 29. “You couldn’t stumble across it, you had to have driven by and seen us working and grabbing off that pile throughout the day in order to know where that was.”
“You’d need a truck and you need to know what that’s being used for, what use it has. It not worth anything as scrap metal.”
-Shane Smith
He said he doesn’t suspect it was stolen by anyone looking to get money for drugs, as it would have been an “ambitious” theft to undertake.
“You’d need a truck and you need to know what that’s being used for, what use it has,” he said. “It not worth anything as scrap metal.”
Smith said in the 20 years he’s been doing residential work, he’s never been robbed.
He said there wasn’t much he could have done to prevent the theft, aside from taking the material back and forth to the site each day, which would require manhours and cost money.
As for hiring a security company to watch the materials overnight, Smith said that would get expensive, and the customer would end up absorbing the costs.
When he discovered the goods were missing, Smith contacted the customer to let him know what happened and said he was understanding.
They are going to wait a few days to see if anything turns up, but if not, Smith said both his company and the customer will absorb the cost of buying new material.
“The job’s gotta get done one way or the other, right?”
The police are investigating and are hoping to look at the various traffic cameras in the area.
The Guardian was unable to reach Charlottetown police for comment.
