The Region - News from Oct. 29, 1985

Thieves made off with more than 1,000 video cassette recorders from a Garden Grove department store warehouse--and 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 facility. After hooking up a tractor they had brought with them to a large trailer containing the $400,000 worth of VCRs, the bandits’ rig sideswiped another trailer, pushing it into a truck which then hit a guard shack, Beauchamp said. The robbery, similar to one last August at the company’s Los Angeles warehouse, began when a gunman with a bandanna over his face locked a woman security guard in a trailer. The robbers were apparently choosy, according to Beauchamp, because they forced open a trailer containing television sets, but left it behind. “Video recorders are better resale items,” Beauchamp said.