A Vancouver Island man is lamenting the overnight theft of his truck by someone he believes has stolen vehicles before.
Leslie Klassen’s 1999 Ford F-350 was stolen from his brother-in-law’s Maple Ridge, B.C., driveway around 2:40 a.m. Tuesday, the act caught by cameras installed on the house. Klassen was visiting from Vancouver Island.
“It’s interesting, he didn’t look inside the truck or he didn’t even try the door handle. He just immediately punched the lock and jumped in, and began hotwiring it,” Klassen said.
“It was pretty quick; he seemed to know what he was doing.”
The footage has been shared with Ridge Meadows RCMP.
In a brief emailed statement, Cpl. Julie Klaussner said two Ford pickup trucks had been stolen in the Pitt Meadows-Maple Ridge area in the past month. Some thieves target them “because they have been proven to be stolen quite easily,” she said.
“There is no task force in Ridge Meadows to deal with thefts of autos,” she wrote.
“Our numbers to date are actually lower in theft of vehicles than last year, and we have less reported this year than last year of the same month.”
Klassen, meanwhile, is missing his beloved truck and hopes insurance will cover the cost of a rental. He currently has no means of getting back to Vancouver Island and was supposed to take a ferry on Wednesday morning.
“I recognize that it’s just stuff, right? But it’s our stuff, and so you have a sentimental attachment to certain things,” he explained. “That’s probably the hard part, because some stuff’s irreplaceable.”
Klassen has owned the F-350 since 2009 and hopes the thief will see fit to return it.
“You know if he’s finished with it, I wouldn’t mind getting it back. Just come back, park it here, I’d be happy.”