Theft of truck, trailer, a disheartening sign

Posted on December 26, 2017 by Sunny South News

Dear Editor,

In the early morning of December 18, 2017, around 4:00 a.m., a thief was lurking the Coaldale area looking for another Ford to steal. Did you know that three (3) or more Ford trucks have been stolen from the Coaldale area in the last few weeks? If not, here’s another sad story of not only a truck getting stolen but a whole lot of other stuff, too.

Around 6:00 a.m., my husband, Chris Megarry, and cousin, Cody Campbell, woke up to discover that his silver 2004 Ford F-350 and our silver Trails West Hot Shot trailer that they travelled to Coaldale with, from the Calgary and Rockyford areas, were stolen from out front our inlaws/sisters house.

My husband and cousin travelled to Coaldale on the evening of December 17 to enjoy one last hunting trip with family and friends – that was taken from them with the discovery of both the truck and trailer missing.

Not long after the discovery of the missing truck and trailer, around 7:30 a.m., there was a sighting of the truck without the trailer heading for Lethbridge that was shared from a local resident on a Facebook post.

Later that day, early evening, another sighting of the truck was posted on Facebook, in the Lethbridge area.

This time, the thief was scoping out another truck to steel when someone saw him, and he fled. On December 19, 2017, around 6:30pm, my brother-in-law, Kurt Megarry, received a message from someone that was shopping at Walmart in Lethbridge, on a shared Facebook post – they messaged Kurt to let him know that they may have found the trailer.

My brother-in-law dropped what he was doing to drive to Lethbridge to see if it was our missing trailer, and discovered that it was.

Thankfully, our trailer was dumped and did not appear to be missing any contents.

Around this same time, my cousin received a call from the police about his truck – it was found in an alley in Coalhurst which was called into the police. From what we know, the trailer still has all its contents.

As for the truck, the police have taken it for inspection where we won’t know its condition or if contents have been stolen until later this week. The truck contained four (4) firearms and ammo, and other personal items.

A theft like this has really hit home for me, our family, and our friends. This has also been a painful reminder that more and more of these crimes are taking place, and that it just doesn’t seem like enough is being done to stop them from happening.

Perhaps the time has come for all of us to take a bigger stand in our community to protect our streets, and to protect our neighbors. As citizens and communities, we should consider implementing a Block Watch program to help avoid theft or at least reduce the chance of theft occurring.

When I was a little kid, we had Block Watch houses that kept an eye out for crime – do these exist anymore? Think of it this way, if one house on each street had a camera set-up to surveillance the street, I bet less of these crimes would take place, and more arrests would be made. The fact that someone or a group of people are out there doing these acts of crime right before Christmas is very disheartening – shame on them!!

While we are lucky that the truck and trailer have been found, it still isn’t over, we don’t know if there is damage to my cousins truck and if the contents will be recovered. We are offering a reward of $500 for information that will lead to an arrest – please contact the police if you have any information.

Thank you for your time and for sharing our story with the community – we hope this story will help prevent similar thefts in the area, and we hope this will help lead to an arrest.

Thank you.

JULIE MEGARRY