Audio clip
Andy Harlen
Criminals with an eye for high-dollar, trendy Apple computers walked away with a major haul Tuesday morning from a Chattanooga retailer.
Thieves cleared out every Apple computer in a heist from Computers Plus on Gunbarrel Road, police and the store manager said.
The theft amounts to at least $30,000 to $40,000 for roughly 13 computers, said Colin Zerk, the store manager.
“The only Apple product we have today is my MacBook,” Mr. Zerk said.
Police have assigned a detective to investigate the crime. He’ll look at video surveillance if it’s available and comb the store for any other clues, said Sgt. Rebecca Shelton, a supervisor in the Chattanooga Police Department’s police property crimes division.
“That’s a significant dollar amount of computers to be taken,” Sgt. Shelton said. “We see laptop thefts all the time. Criminals like computers of all types because they can be sold on eBay.”
It’s not unusual for criminals planning to make a major heist such as this to stake out a store for days, testing police response times and in-store security measures, Sgt. Shelton said.
The thefts follow a trend in computer larceny, Mr. Zerk said, noting that Apple products in otheComputer Plus franchises in other regional cities were targeted recently, and the Apple Store in Nashville recently was burglarized, he said.
Mr. Zerk said the early morning burglars broke through a back door of the store at 1906 Gunbarrel Road.
“The ironic thing is that Apple just released a bunch of new stuff yesterday, so they just stole a bunch of outdated computers,” Mr. Zerk said.
Pointing out a slight bright spot to the crime, he said the theft clears the way for the store to re-stock with the latest Apple products.
Adam Crisp covers education issues for the Times Free Press. He joined the paper's staff in 2007 and initially covered crime, public safety, courts and general assignment topics. Prior to Chattanooga, Crisp was a crime reporter at the Savannah Morning News and has been a reporter and editor at community newspapers in southeast Georgia. In college, he led his student paper to a first-place general excellence award from the Georgia College Press Association. He earned ...
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