Thieves robbed two houses under construction in town, taking $27,000 worth of heavy kitchen appliances from one of them, construction tools from the other. Neither house was on a heavily traveled road.
One of the houses is located on Greenleaf Road (also frequently called Bumpalong Road), a private street between Hollow Tree Ridge Road and Christie Hill Road. That theft occurred sometime between Saturday, July 23 and Monday, July 25.
The other, on Stephanie Lane, a dead-end street off of Hollow Tree Ridge Road and a bit less than a mile to the north of Greenleaf Road. That incident occurred sometime between last Tuesday, July 26 and Wednesday, July 27.
Police did not indicate that the two thefts, in which completely different items were taken, were connected, but detectives are actively investigating each incident.
Darien police gave these accounts of the incidents:
Greenleaf Road (Sometimes Called Bumpalong Road)
Sometime between 11:30 a.m. on Saturday, July 23 and 4:30 p.m., Monday, construction equipment, tools and material was stolen from a house under construction.
In the garage area, 11 five-gallon paint buckets valued at $1,500 were taken. Doors for the garage had not yet been installed. (The external structure of the house had been built, but the interior was still a work in progress.)
These other missing items had been in the house, and at least one door leading to the outside hadn’t been installed: Two step-ladders (valued at a total of $250), a “compound bazooka” (a tool used in sealing the seams between drywall sheets; valued at $500), and other miscellaneous spackling tools (used to fill holes and cracks in plaster) and associated items (valued, all together, at $500), for a total value of $2,750 in stolen items.
About two months ago, in May, copper valued at about $500 was stolen from the same construction site, according to the construction manager, but that theft previously hadn’t been reported to police.
Stephanie Lane
Sometime between 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, July 26 and 7 a.m., Wednesday, July 27, a large truck left tire tracks through the back yard from the driveway to a french door in the back of the house under construction.
There was no sign of forced entry into the house, but the locking pins for the french door weren’t engaged when the theft was discovered. An alarm system was in place, but wasn’t on because monitoring connected with it hadn’t been set up.
These heavy appliances (all of them new) installed in and around the kitchen were stolen:
- Two Sub Zero brand refrigerators, one valued at $7,769, the other at $7,959;
- A Marvel brand beer keg cooler valued at $1,900;
- Two Marvel brand wine refrigerators, each valued at $1,400;
- A pull-out drawer refrigerator valued at $2,000
- A Bosch microwave valued at $1,155;
- A faucet for a sink at a bar, valued at $714;
- A kitchen sink faucet valued at $1,600;
- Something described as an “instralation kit” valued at $239.
Some of the figures above are rounded but the exact total comes to $27,335.44.
After the theft, a significant amount of water spilled on the kitchen floor, apparently when hoses were cut from the refrigerators. That caused damage to the floor, and a construction crew was already ripping it up when police detectives visited the house.