Ill try and keep it short..
I own a utility construction company with projects all over the country. One of our project is in St Louis and we have around 25 people with 6 trucks and a variety of equipment there. We hired a local guy to be a non-driving laborer about a week and half ago who had minimal construction knowledge but seemed like he would work hard. Our trucks are assigned to a driver who is responsible for that truck and its upkeep. Only designated drivers have the permission to drive the trucks and only during work hours.
Well Sunday night the new guy decided to swipe the keys of a brand new 2017 Ford F350 Flat Bed 4x4 truck. The truck was purchased around 3 weeks ago for $71,000. The driver had the keys in his hotel room and apparently didn't know this guy grabbed them. The guy took off in the truck, which had around $40,000 in tooling attached to it, and went looking for heroin. He was missing for around 12 hours when he called his supervisor from a downtown hospital asking for a ride. I had just landed in St Louis and went myself to the hospital. At some point the night before he was transported via ambulance to Barnes Jewish Hospital with a heroin overdose. They released him and he tried to tell me he left the truck at a fire station north of the city. After a couple hours on this wild goose chase I pulled into a fire station and called the police. The police arrived and took him into custody. When he arrived at the police station he admitted to the police that he had traded the truck for heroin somewhere near downtown.
So yesterday I decided to call the St Louis County jail to see what his charges were and make sure he was still in custody. The lady on phone informed me that he had been let go without charges. How is this possible? How does this guy get to walk free? I asked to speak to the prosecutor and of course haven't received a response back.
The insurance will take care of the truck and my inland marine policy will take care of the tools but now Im down a truck for a few weeks and that crew didn't get to work that day which lost around $10,000 in production. All of my trucks (19 trucks) are getting outfitted with GPS trackers tomorrow by the way. I should have done this a long time ago but I guess I learned my lesson. I just can't believe that this guy gets to walk free. If you can steal a $70,000 truck and walk free? How are our jails overcrowded if this isn't considered a crime? Any suggestions?