On average, one in four workplace accidents and injuries will involve a forklift in some way. Yet one recent event showed that using forklifts, despite their hazards, can be highly beneficial in some unexpected ways.
According to a September 25 WHAS 11 article, workers at Morrison Supply Company in Houston, Texas managed to catch a suspected copper thief thanks to a forklift.
When a man entered the business saying he was collecting copper for another company, Morrison workers moved several forklifts around his car to block him from leaving — as he had already made off with some of the company’s copper the day before.
“I had the yard guys pull the forklifts in front of his vehicle to load him up, but we never intended to actually load him up,” Darrell Jarvis, Morrison Supply Company’s Assistant Manager, said. “We blocked him in so he couldn’t leave, and we called the cops.”
As workers waited for the police to arrive, the thief displayed signs of panic, asking the workers to move the forklifts and at one point trying to move them out of the way himself, WHAS 11 reports.
“(The police) were pretty excited it went down the way it went down,” Jarvis said.
According to WHAS 11, the alleged thief had been wanted by police for some time before he was caught at Morrison Supply Company; he’d previously stolen copper from similar businesses and companies in the area and is part of a larger investigation into metal theft.
Houston Police is still investigating the matter, and the thief’s charges are pending — but if one thing’s certain, it’s that he will think twice about stealing from a business that uses forklifts.