VIDEO: Attempted copper thief does $30K worth of damage to ABQ healthcare facilities

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) – A person was caught on camera in broad daylight on the roof of several healthcare provider suites trying to get the copper out of the HVAC units and ended up knocking out the air conditioning for the medical practices for days in record heat.

The person caught on camera caused tens of thousands of dollars worth of damage, and never even made off with the copper. “Like, stealing copper, come on man! And I don’t even think that they actually got away with it, so it was just lying there,” said Shauna Montoya, a nurse practitioner at Rio Grande Family Medicine.

On August 17, just before 1:00 p.m., surveillance video from a neighboring senior living complex caught a figure up on the roof of several healthcare suites on Encino Place. “In the middle of the day, it was a Saturday, we had an individual who got up, scaled up on the back of our walls, and just ripped out a bunch of panels looking for copper,” said David Hsi, who co-owns the suites in the complex as well as Rio Grande Family Medicine and Albuquerque Clinical Trials which are both housed there.

He said a good Samaritan nearby saw it happening and called the police. “He witnessed the man on the roof and saw this individual cutting out the copper,” Hsi said.

“The police were nearby actually up the street, and police starting driving making their way down, and I think that spooked the individual, and so when I got up on the roof all of the copper that he had cut out was still up there,” Hsi said.

He said he found out this had happened the next Monday when his tenants began complaining of the heat. In cutting out the panels from the HVAC units, the person knocked out the A/C for the medical practices; it was 97 degrees Fahrenheit that day. In fact, the day the thief vandalized the HVAC units, it was a record high of 98 degrees Fahrenheit.

Hsi said he’s grateful someone called the cops when they did: “Had he not done that, then you know probably all of our suites would be completely out of commission.”

Rio Grande Family Medicine was one of the health care providers that was affected: “We had to close down one half. Apparently, there’s two units up there, they got to one, so that whole side was down which affected patients,” Montoya said, “We had to cancel and reschedule and a lot of us are booked out for a few weeks so that meant that those visits were pushed out for almost a month.”

Not only was the crook on the roof captured on camera, but other surveillance video in the complex showed the person may not have been acting alone. “He had someone else in a lookout car,” Hsi said.

Even though the copper was left behind, the damage was done; and, totaled roughly $30,000. “So, a lot of damage, I think $30,000 worth of damage done for, for nothing,” Montoya said.

“So, it didn’t look like you know he was able to take any of it; and that even just makes it even more of a sore subject because you know, [he] went through all this trouble, didn’t get anything out of it, and just really put not only our business but two other businesses completely out of commission,” Hsi said.

Hsi hopes sharing this will spread awareness in the community that he believes this type of crime is rampant, and that this will hopefully deter criminals. “[I] wish there was something that could be done, you know, and just wish that yeah, you know, there was more to deter people from doing this kind of stuff,” Hsi said.

I’ve heard of businesses having to install barbed wire you know, around the tops of their building,” Hsi said, “That makes me sad to think that I have to outfit our businesses like a small prison just to deter people from committing similar crimes.”

Hsi said incidents like this are disheartening: “Here in Albuquerque, and New Mexico in general, you know, we have such a shortage of healthcare providers and you know stuff like this is just really, it puts us out of business and it creates a shortage of healthcare for the people that live here in the city.”

They filed a police report about this incident shortly after it happened in August. KRQE News 13 reached out to the Albuquerque Police Department (APD) for an update. They told KRQE News 13 the case will be assigned to an investigator by the end of the day Thursday.

Hsi said in the roughly six years they’ve been there, they’ve had ten or more instances of vandalism, theft, and property crime. “We had several other instances where we had an individual who flooded our underground basement and then another instance where an individual stole our company vehicle and wrecked it at the Arroyo Del Oso Golf Course,” Hsi said, “This is probably one of the top most expensive instances we’ve ran into.”

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