SAN ANTONIO – San Antonio police detained two people in connection with the Wednesday morning theft of an ATM from a Stone Oak bank.
According to a preliminary police report, the two people in custody were in a separate vehicle following a U-Haul truck that police believe was used in the theft.
Officers responded shortly before 3:30 a.m. to the Chase bank on Evans Road near Stone Oak Parkway.
They said the bank's security staff had notified them after seeing the crime being committed by way of surveillance cameras.
When police arrived, the machine and the thieves were gone.
Police spotted the U-Haul truck a short time later traveling east on Loop 1604.
The police report said officers briefly chased the truck but then backed off.
Officers later found the truck on Judson Road, but the two people who were inside the vehicle had run away.
Police managed to stop a car that was following behind the truck, the report said. The two people in the vehicle were taken into custody.
The crime, which involved the use of a forklift that was stolen from a nearby construction site, was similar to a series of ATM thefts committed earlier this year.
On April 25, someone also used a stolen forklift to remove an ATM in a parking lot on Austin Highway.
But the criminals dropped the money machine as they made their escape from police. Pieces of the machine were left scattered across the parking lot.
An attempted theft in February came to a similar conclusion when the machine fell off the back of a pickup truck the thieves were using to escape. The ATM landed on an Interstate 35 access road in Windcrest.
A few days before that, thieves were able to complete the crime and escape with the machine intact.
Investigators said they planned to review surveillance video from the latest crime to learn more about the people involved.
