CREMONA – Three tractors stolen during the night and a 46-year-old stopped by the police. It is the brilliant operation carried out by the soldiers of the Provincial Command of Cremona who recovered the agricultural vehicles and related equipment.
Thursday 13 June, around 3.40am, a patrol of carabinieri was patrolling the countryside around Cremona, when he noticed an articulated lorry heading towards an area where there are some warehouses. The soldiers, suspicious of the unusual presence of that type of vehicle at that time of night and in such an isolated place, followed him, without being noticed, to understand where he was headed. The man went into the courtyard of a prefabricated building left in a state of abandonment, where the truck stopped. Here the carabinieri proceeded to check the vehicle and its driver, noticing that the chain closing the sliding gate accessing the courtyard had been cut and a door of the shed was broken.
Entered inside, the police found three tractors, one of which with the engine and lights still on, all without license plates. By verifying the chassis numbers it was possible to trace the owner of the vehicles, identified as an agricultural entrepreneur from Cremona who, when contacted, rushed to reach the location, completely unaware of the theft suffered during the night. The man confirmed that he was the owner of the tractors and that he had used them until 8.30pm the previous day, before parking them in his company at the end of the work.
The entrepreneur then formalized the theft report and the military verified that the 46-year-old truck driver had arrived on site to load the tractors and take them away. Most likely the driver of the truck was waited in the shed by other people, who had disappeared at the sight of the soldiers. The owner of the building was also found to be uninvolved in the matter, as also demonstrated by the damage to the protection measures resulting from undue access to the property and by other signs of a previous inspection carried out by the gang. The tractors, worth around 100,000 euros, were returned to the owner and the 46-year-old was accompanied in the barracks to be subjected to arrest as a crime suspect for receiving stolen goods and subsequently taken to the Cremona prison, awaiting the validation hearing. The hearing, held this morning, ended with the validation of the act and the man’s release from prison. The investigation continues to identify any accomplices and trace the destination of the vehicles, probably the foreign market.
