The RCMP say that four people in eastern Newfoundland are facing charges after someone used a stolen backhoe to tear off the front of the RBC bank in Holyrood.HO/The Canadian Press
A thief driving a stolen front-end loader crashed into the only bank of a small Newfoundland town this week and made off with the ATM in the back of a dump truck, in yet another case of “backhoe bandits” plaguing the easternmost province.
It was the third time this year robbers have plowed heavy pieces of machinery into businesses in an effort to steal cash from ATMs, one of many such heists in the past several years, according to police.
The people in the laid-back town of Holyrood, about 30 minutes from St. John’s, awoke Monday in shock to see the Royal Bank branch essentially bulldozed into a pile of bricks and crumpled steel beams.
“It looked like a bomb hit it,” said Melvin Hickey of nearby Chapel’s Cove. “You could look right in the front of the building right through to the back.”
The call came in to police at about 3:45 a.m. from a neighbour who awoke to the sound of a loud crash, said Holyrood Mayor Gary Goobie. The neighbour spotted a dump truck and a pick-up truck barrelling away from the rubble, he said.
They made off down the highway, nearly to St. John’s, when blue and red flashing lights lit up the sky. Police arrested four men and impounded the vehicles, said RCMP Corporal Jolene Garland and Royal Newfoundland Constabulary Constable James Cadigan in a joint news release. The following day, RCMP charged Jason Weir, 33, of Conception Bay South, with break and enter, mischief to property over $5,000, possession of stolen property, and breaching conditions of a release order.
The red dump truck used as the getaway vehicle, according to an RCMP photo released to the media, belonged to Weir’s Construction, a prominent family business in Conception Bay South. Sharon Weir, an office assistant who answered the phone at Weir’s Construction, said “the family is not interested in speaking with the media.”
Mr. Goobie said he is angry about the destruction of a long-serving business in the community.
“I feel like our town has been violated,” he said, adding that residents are in shock and disbelief. “It is quite disturbing because we all have to ask ourselves, ‘What’s going to happen next?’ It’s scary.”
Robert Crowley, whose Komatsu front-end loader was stolen off his property and used in the incident, felt something was awry in the days before. The door of the front-end loader was left open one night. And, he noticed, looking back through webcam videos, people were skulking around his pit.
Keys for heavy equipment are easy to obtain, he adds. But the driver would’ve had to rumble the front loader, which has a maximum speed of just 50 kilometres an hour, two kilometres up the road to the Royal Bank before blasting into its single-storey brick facade.
“You need some nerve to do something like that,” said Mr. Crowley, the owner-operator of Black Ridge Construction.
While robberies with heavy pieces of machinery have occurred in other provinces, most recently last month when someone drove a stolen backhoe into a mall in Pickering, Ont., and swiped the ATM, Newfoundland appears to be an epicentre for backhoe banditry.
Last month, there was a similar incident at a gas station in St. John’s, said Constable Cadigan. In May, someone plowed a stolen excavator into the Community Credit Union in Witless Bay, ripping out the ATM, which police said contained a substantial amount of cash.
There have been others over the past several years – including four times in one week in January, 2019, according to news reports. (The Royal Newfoundland Constabulary said it doesn’t track this information.) All of them involved stolen heavy-duty machines tearing into banks on the Avalon Peninsula to steal ATMs.
In Holyrood, the Royal Bank branch is indefinitely closed, fenced off with a 24-hour security guard. Staff have been redeployed to other branches in the area, said Kelly Sutton, RBC regional vice-president for Newfoundland and Labrador.
Mr. Goobie, the mayor, says people drove from an hour away to use that branch and he’s worried about the economic impact that not having a bank for the foreseeable future will have on the town of 2,500 people.
Constable Cadigan suggests the public be vigilant and report suspicious behaviour, such as front loaders out on the road late at night when there’s no snowfall.
“These perpetrators have no concern for the safety of the community,” he said. “They’re attacking the structure without rhyme or reason or consideration of what impact they may have.”