Santa Clarita / Antelope Valley : Aluminum Stolen From Airplane Maker Is Recovered

About half of the $2.8 million worth of aluminum recently stolen from a Valencia airplane manufacturer has been found at a local scrap yard, said authorities, who also announced Wednesday that an arrest warrant has been issued for a suspect in the burglary.

Eldon Santizo, 20, of Los Angeles is being sought for his alleged role in the heist during which padlocks were cut off two storage trailers containing the metal pieces used in tooling airplane bodies.

“I believe there were others involved and we’re looking at those possibilities,” said Detective John Mundell of the Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station. “We haven’t identified anybody else at this point.”

About 3,000 pounds of the small, aluminum pieces of tooling taken in the robbery were used by Jay-Dee Aircraft Supply Co. to build the frames of cargo planes. Police officials estimated a scrap dealer would pay 92 cents a pound for the pieces. As tooling, the metal pieces are worth about 1,000 times more than their scrap value, said Rusty Werth, general manager of the company.

Police traced the airplane tooling to an unspecified Los Angeles scrap yard by reviewing the yard’s receipts, Mundell said.

“If you take a stereo into a pawnshop, you fill out a pawn slip and the pawn slip eventually makes it to the Sheriff’s Department, so we know you pawned that stuff,” he said. “Scrap yards fill out a similar slip, which goes to the Sheriff’s Department or LAPD.”

Police said they had expected the burglar to cut up the items before selling them to a scrap dealer so they would be harder to trace. But Werth said his recovered tooling is intact except for some steel pins removed from otherwise all-aluminum pieces.

“We’re very happy they recovered some of it and we hope they’ll eventually be able to recover the rest of it,” he said, adding that the tooling will be put back to use immediately.

The heist at Jay-Dee Aircraft was the largest of about 10 burglaries at various businesses in the Valencia Industrial Center during the past several months, including four at the aircraft company. The materials taken in the other thefts ranged in value from $150 to $30,000, deputies said.

Mundell said sheriff’s deputies and Los Angeles Police Department officers are investigating to see if Santizo would be a suspect in any of the other burglaries.