SAN ANTONIO – A suspected thief is facing charges after an employee returning from a trip foiled a burglary at an auto battery distribution center.
San Antonio Police police said they arrested a man and an accomplice who were stealing from an Interstate Batteries distributor in the 900 block of Chulie Drive, using the business's own vehicles to try to haul off the goods. He will face burglary and vehicle theft charges, police said.
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The second person was able to run away through a hole in the fence, and it wasn't clear Sunday night if he or she had been found yet.
Neither might have been caught if general manager Darwin Hill hadn't parked his car at the business instead of at the airport while he and his wife were on a trip. When they returned to pick up the car Sunday afternoon, they found the location apparently “ransacked.”
Hill said he was calling his assistant manager when he saw one of the company's trucks coming back down the street and into the lot. It was the thieves, he said, "coming back for round two."
So as the thieves went in, he and his wife went out, ducked behind the bushes and called the police who showed up and handled the rest.
"The officer blocked the gate and grabbed the guy that was still in the truck, and the second subject we saw run through the fence, hole in the fence that they made, and we had K-9 and the helicopter up searching for the suspect," said SAPD Sgt. William Armstrong.
Hill said he and his wife's bags, which they had left inside the building when they were hiding outside calling police, were found in the back of the company truck.
Police also found a company van nearby, outside of the lot. Armstrong said police were able to recover a safe, laptops and other equipment.
There were also batteries knocked over inside the building, apparently from the thieves trying to load them up.
Hill did not have a full account of all the items that had been stolen or damaged.