Thiefs Steal One-ton Safe in Van Buren, Arkansas

In Van Buren, Ark., police and FBI agents are investigating the robbery of a local bank, according to the Associated Press.

The first Community Bank was discovered early Sunday morning with a huge hole in the rear wall. Thieves used the hole to make off with the bank's safe, which weighed one ton. The bank's safe was gone when a bank security officer and investigators entered the establishment on Sunday morning.

A spokesman for Little Rock's FBI, Steve Frazier, commented, "You don't see this every day."

The robbery was accomplished when the robbers apparently stole a forklift found near a construction site that was near the bank. They used it to lift the safe out of the bank, but police are not sure whether they used the forklift to ram into the side of the bank. It's possible a vehicle was used to get in, or another method altogether.

The Van Buren Police department detective Keith Lindley commented on the robbery. "I could say without a shadow of a doubt that whoever is responsible for this had (either) put forth a great deal of effort of planning and surveillance or was loosely associated with the bank," he said.

The burglars first made the hole in the wall, then were able to disable the bank's security camera by the way of pulling the wires out, and also by pointing the cameras away from the safe they took.

The forklift was then driven through the hole that they had made in the wall and they took the safe, according to Lindley. Officials think they might have put the safe into a pickup that they left at a church nearby. The forklift was then abandoned.

"It had to have been a minimum of two (suspects)," Lindley said. "My gut feeling is three or four based on everything I've seen and the level of sophistication."

Frazier says that authorities are doing what they can to figure out the people who did this. "We are in the process of trying to determine who did it," he said. "We're not ready to release any names or identities", according to the Associated Press.

"We will locate them, we will arrest them and then they will be prosecuted," Frazier said.

They also plan to watch different surveillance videos from business that are nearby with hopes the burglary was caught on those tapes.

Frazier said that the method the criminals used to rob the bank was unusual, but not unheard of. "There have been physical intrusions into banks before," he said.

originally reported by The Associated Press, "Burglars steal bank's one-ton safe"
http://www.ohio.com/mld/ohio/news/weird_news/17447580.htm