Garden Grove : Robbers Drive Off With 1,000 Video Recorders

Robbers not only made off with more than 1,000 videocassette recorders from a department store warehouse early Monday morning, police said, they also left a trail of wreckage behind.

“They obviously didn’t have a professional truck driver with them,” Garden Grove Police Sgt. Bruce Beauchamp said of the group that robbed the Montgomery Ward & Co. facility at 7300 Chapman Ave.

After the robbers hooked up a tractor they had brought with them to a large trailer containing the $400,000 worth of VCRs, the rig sideswiped another trailer, pushing it into a truck that then hit a guard shack, Beauchamp said.

The robbery, similar to one that occurred at the company’s Los Angeles warehouse last August, began about 2:15 a.m. when a lone gunman with a bandanna over his face forced a 23-year-old female security guard into a trailer and locked her inside.

Beauchamp said the guard told police that although she couldn’t see outside, she did hear the voices of several men.

The robbers were apparently choosy about what they took, according to Beauchamp, because they forced open a trailer containing television sets, but left it behind.

“Video recorders are better resale items and these were state-of-the-art models made by Sharp,” Beauchamp said.

The security guard was freed from the trailer when her cries for help were heard by police called to the scene about 4:30 a.m. by the woman’s replacement.

Beauchamp said officers were also looking into the possibility that the tractor used in the theft may have been stolen in the area over the weekend.