High dollar copper theft at old grocery

By Eric Sollman
WAFF 48 News Reporter

A large-scale copper theft in the Valley left thousands of dollars worth of damage.

The old Food World building sits on a busy stretch of Highway 431 in Albertville.

Police say someone was recently busy stealing copper from the building's roof.

"Apparently people got on the roof and took all the copper wires and copper tubing from the units on the roof," says Sergeant Jamie Smith with the Albertville Police Department.

Smith says police got the call Tuesday alerting them of the missing metal.

"The owner of the building went to do some repairs on the roof and he had found that four or five refrigeration units had been damaged," says Smith.

Three air conditioners and two refrigeration units were among the damaged equipment.

Smith says copper theft isn't an uncommon crime in Albertville, however, the nearly $60,000 dollars worth of damage is rare.

"We're still seeing a lot of them, they seem maybe to have slowed down a little bit, this is the biggest one, this dollar amount that we've seen in a while," adds Smith.

Police estimate the crime happened sometime between February 15th and 19th.

You can send Eric a comment at esollman@waff.com.