News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
This infrared image from a security camera at the Spring Canyon Cemetery shop shows a suspected thief walking up to a Ford truck with a gooseneck trailer at the shop that held the cemetery tractor. - photos courtesy Grand Coulee Dam Lions Club.
This photo from the same camera, taken 40 minutes later just as more sunlight is hitting the camera lens and switching it to visible-light mode, shows the suspect driving the tractor from the shop to the trailer, which had been moved off to the left of the camera's field of view.
Early Monday morning, someone stole a tractor from the Spring Canyon Cemetery.
The thief was there for at least 40 minutes, apparently breaking into one building through an old, wooden panel covering a door window, then probably taking keys found inside to open another building that housed the tractor, a 1996 John Deere 1070 loader with a backhoe attachment.
The Lincoln County Sheriff's Office is hoping the pickup may look familiar to someone, so they put photos on a Facebook page and asked for information from anyone who might know who it is or where such a pickup truck is.
"Suspect vehicle is a light colored mid 80's to mid 90's single cab Ford pickup (possibly dually) pulling a tandem axle, flatbed, gooseneck trailer. Truck appears to have DOT reflective tape along the side of the flatbed," the LCSO's Facebook post states.
"Please contact Lincoln County Dispatch at 1-509-725-3501 if you have any information on the stolen tractor or the suspect vehicle," they ask.
"Kind of disheartening," said Rob Loch, president of the Lions Club, which owns the cemetery.
They are not insured for the loss. Similar tractors can be found online in the $11,000 range.
Since the cemetery's inception in the 1950s, Loch said, "we've never had a theft out there. We've had two this year."
The first one was about three months ago, when someone broke into the smaller building, the one with the wooden window panel in the door. They made off with power tools and gas cans.
Loch speculated they also could have noticed a set of keys on a John Deere key ring in that building and decided to come back with a trailer.
The Monday morning thief first drove up in darkness, at 3:40. The photo of the suspect driving the tractor away from the shop records the time as 4:20.
Loch said the loss of the trailer will not affect burials; the digging of graves has been contracted out for about a year and a half. But it will affect day-today maintenance for tasks like hauling away leftover dirt, or spreading gravel.
And it's one more thing to deal with for a small band of volunteers who comprise the Lions Club, which has been looking for a way for some other community entity to take over Spring Canyon Cemetery.
So far, they have had no luck with that search either.
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