Two heavy vehicles and a trailer were stolen nearly three months ago on St. Croix, and it’s not clear which, if any, law enforcement agency has taken the lead in investigating the theft.
Company representative Marian Prescod said thieves absconded with a Mack dump truck, a Mack tractor head, and a “lowboy” trailer owned by Rendco by driving through the gate on the property in the middle of the night on March 6. A surveillance camera operated by Captain Morgan distiller Diageo caught the vehicles at a nearby intersection shortly before 2 a.m.
“They just plowed through it,” Prescod said. “What they did, they got in and they drove the equipment through the gate.”
Prescod said that yesterday, the equipment’s owners found out that a Freightliner dump truck had also been taken, but they’re not sure of the exact date of the theft because the company is based on St. Thomas. In total, the stolen equipment cost approximately $400,000, and Prescod said the lowboy alone “is about half that.”
“There are only about two of us on St. Croix that have a lowboy of that size and capacity. It’s what we use to carry the largest piece of equipment,” she said, which is a V-8 bulldozer used to demolish the Charles Harwood Memorial Complex. “How can you not find it?”
The vehicles were taken from a piece of land the owners leased from the V.I. Water and Power Authority near the Molasses Dock on the south side of St. Croix. The V.I. Police Department and the V.I. Port Authority both told the Source that the thefts fall under the other agency’s jurisdiction.
“Of course,” VIPA spokesperson Monifa Marrero Braithwaite said Monday, “we will assist in any way possible, but we don’t have any direct involvement with the incident.”
After being told of the Port Authority’s position, Joseph said it “appears as if we really have a deep miscommunication, because my understanding is that it happened at the container port, and that is Port Authority property.”
“The Port Authority is now saying that it’s not on their property and that they’re the ones that did the police report. The report was generated by them,” she said. Joseph added that there are “so many different law enforcement agencies with their own responsibilities that we’re not even trying to take over work that don’t belong to us.”
If the theft occurred on VIPA property, she said, the semiautonomous agency’s own law enforcement was supposed to take lead on the investigation and ask VIPD for assistance as needed.
“But they haven’t done that,” she said. “So as far as we know, it’s a Port Authority case. Now you’ve just informed me that it did not happen on their property. I’m going to have to go do some following up, but we are, in fact, we have an all-points bulletin out on the vehicles. We are keeping our eyes out to see if we see them. We have done some investigative work … went on to properties, checked vehicles that match the basic description, checking VIN numbers — we have done those things, looking for the vehicles. But to say we are ‘lead?’ We have not taken a lead on it.”
Joseph said that if the case had been with VIPD, it would have been transferred to the department’s Criminal Investigation Bureau within 48 hours. She said it was left up to the Port Authority, “hoping that when they need help, they will reach out.”
“That never occurred, and our plate is full,” she said. “I’m not gonna lie to tell you that VIPD is going to go and take another agency’s case just for the hell of it, because our plate is running over.”
The thefts are only the latest crime involving heavy equipment or machinery to hit the territory’s largest island. Industrial kitchen equipment was stolen from Eulalie Rivera K-8 School in February, and seven heavy vehicles operated by Just Right Trucking were destroyed by arson the month before. In 2023, thieves stole 107 solar panels stored at the St. Croix Educational Complex.
Joseph said the community thinks the police department is “supposed to be this miracle agency that’s supposed to come from nowhere and all of a sudden, have all the answers.”
“Because we’re not there when these things are occurring,” she said, and the people who do witness the crimes don’t come forward. “But the police department is supposed to — somehow or the other — have that answer. But we don’t have it. Not for lack of not wanting it, not for lack of not looking for it … and to be honest, that school — the thefts of the school — are all inside jobs.”
Prescod decried that the conversation had shifted from the thefts to jurisdictional disputes.
“I wish that the focus could be on the injustice and the loss and all of that,” she said. “All of these other things are just noise. They have their own jurisdictions … it has nothing to do with any of this. And all of the attention now is going away from the fact that all of this equipment has been taken and stolen, and it’s out there, and we need to have the public vigilant to see if anybody shows up with a Freightliner, two Mack trucks, a lowboy … it’s gotten lost.”
Joseph and VIPD spokesperson Glen Dratte said it’s possible the vehicles could have already been repainted or stripped for parts.
