NORTH FORT MYERS, Fla. — For the second time in less than a month, security cameras at a hotel being torn down in North Fort Myers have helped Lee County Sheriff’s deputies catch a criminal.
On Sunday, workers tearing down the old Red Roof Inn off of U.S. 41 in North Fort Myers received a notification from their security cameras of movement at their demolition site.
When they opened their cameras, they found a man sitting on top of their big yellow excavator siphoning the diesel fuel from the tank.
“I’ve been doing this for a couple of years and I’ve never seen nothing like this,” said Bo Lambert, who works for Richard A. Hamann & Sons Demolition.
This is the second time in less than a month that crooks were caught on camera committing crimes here.
Back in July, a man was caught by deputies after he stole copper piping from the building overnight.
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If you ask Lambert, it seems that each flip of the calendar brings another criminal. One that seems to ignore the big metal fence, fashioned with signs that say “keep out” and “Smile. You’re on camera.”
“Dumb,” he said.
When they found out about the man siphoning gas, Lambert and his boss were just ten minutes away.
“We was on the way back from Tampa and we was ten minutes down the road and my boss gets the notification on his phone. There the guy is stealing the fuel out of the machine,” he said.
They hurried to the old hotel as they watched the man suck the diesel through an old garden hose, draining it into tanks.
“He was just popping a squat on top of the machine, siphoning the gas out of it,” he said.
The crook used a big piece of plywood as a barrier between him and the roadway. But he forgot to look for cameras that could be watching from anywhere.
“The eye in the sky caught him already.”
Two cameras nestled in a tree behind him were recording his every move, including when he took off as deputies walked up.
“He took off running down this way, down the canal,” Lambert said.
After a quick chase and trying to swim away in the Caloosahatchee River, deputies arrested William Knorr, 41, charging him with grand theft from a construction site, resisting officers and probation violation. He was also booked on an outstanding warrant from DeSoto County.
According to Lambert, deputies say Knorr came with a motive.
“Supposedly his friend broke down yesterday out in the water and sent him to the gas station to get diesel fuel,” Lambert explained. “But he comes here to steal our fuel.”
Knorr managed to fill up the three tanks he brought as well as two more he stole from the worker’s job site. He even filled up his Big Gulp cup to the brim.
“I guess he was wanting to drink it,” Lambert said.
The best part? He paddled to shore in a canoe and had the same place to get back to his friend’s boat.
“The dummy thought he could he could get all that fuel back on his canoe without sinking.”
Now the only thing that sank was his chances of getting out of there without being caught.
Workers here want one thing to be very clear: if you come to commit a crime, you will be caught on camera.