What if they came in by 4-wheeler and then loaded it in the truck?
thats certainly a possibility but that would mean they were pretty local and his wife would have seen/heard them, no? Wonder how much we arent being told.
What if they came in by 4-wheeler and then loaded it in the truck?
thats certainly a possibility but that would mean they were pretty local and his wife would have seen/heard them, no? Wonder how much we arent being told.
Well, I suppose walking there would make them local but I don't think they walked. Unless they needed some wheels because they didn't have any and had to get somewhere but had no intention of paying. I was thinking they had rode up and hidden the 4-wheeler off the road further away. It was already pretty dark when they showed up.
Well, I suppose walking there would make them local but I don't think they walked. Unless they needed some wheels because they didn't have any and had to get somewhere but had no intention of paying. I was thinking they had rode up and hidden the 4-wheeler off the road further away. It was already pretty dark when they showed up.
thats certainly a possibility but that would mean they were pretty local and his wife would have seen/heard them, no? Wonder how much we arent being told.
There's a nasty connection between the high number of vehicles stolen in this area, underage drivers and the now-banned drug, Oxycontin.
Saturday, in a series on "chinging" -- the local slang for stealing cars because it sounds like ka-ching, or making money -- the series explored the way drug addiction has lead to a booming industry in car thefts, how things are changing with since Ontario delisted Oxycontin from the legal drug list and the way the Oxycontin cycle has looped people back into drugs and car thefts.
He kept clear of Brantford when he was stealing too, saying heading to this city to ching is asking for trouble.
“I would go to Toronto, Niagara Falls, Barrie, London. Then they're not looking for them on the reserve so fast. If you get them from Brantford, the chase is on.”
Timothy is highly skilled as a chinger: he can steal a car in four seconds.
His favourite way to work involved getting a list from his buyer and he'd just go a target the wanted cars.
“Sometimes they needed parts, like a certain set of rims, and sometimes they want the whole truck.”
If the order is just for a part, like the rims, Timothy would pull into a field, strip the car of sellable parts and leave it.
He often dealt in high-end vehicles, including Hummers.
“Once I ran over another car with a Hummer just to get it out of the driveway.”
“I don't actually go out and do the stealing. I just drop them off. I would take those guys out and for $150 or $200 I drop them off in Toronto, Brampton, Mississauga, Oakville, Niagara Falls or St. Catharines.
Robert, the chinger who says he was spending $1,000 a day on Oxy pills, says some of his fellow chingers “run kids” because they're easier to manipulate.
“If you offer $1,000 to a kid for a stolen vehicle, that's a lot to them but you can turn around and sell it for $5,000.”
And, he says, there are some gangs and some ethnic groups operating in the chinging business on Six Nations, but they're mingled in with the homegrown car thieves.
The situation means there are teens running around the reserve in $100,000 Escalades, Robert says, which leads to more violent encounters with the police when the young drivers, fearful of being caught, simply ram their way out of the incident.
“If (a cop) jumps out and points a gun at me, I don't want to get shot. That's why more cops are getting rammed.”
Robert says he also avoids stealing or selling in Brantford.
“The cops don't like natives in Brantford. The only time I go to Brantford was when I went to jail. I used to sell all over the place, but not Brantford
In the past four years, according to Ontario Provincial Police (OPP), nearly 1,800 stolen vehicles have been recovered from the reserve. Many hundreds more are likely still there, or have been "chopped" into parts and sold to unscrupulous dealers across North America.
In 2004 to 2006, more than 1,200 vehicles with an estimated value of $33-million, were hauled away from the reserve. In 2007, at least 578 were recovered. This year's tally so far exceeds 80.
And because the 18,000-hectare reserve - an hour's drive west of Toronto and home to the protagonists in the long-running Caledonia land-claim tussle - is so thickly forested, the real numbers are probably higher still.
The Ontario Provincial Police rarely ventures on to the reserve without the approval of its 28-officer police force.
"Some cars stay buried in the woods for years," said Detective Constable Wesley Barnes of the OPP-led joint forces auto-theft team, recently joined by the Six Nations police. "If you gave me a helicopter and the time, I could find you a hundred stolen cars."
Spirited away from hotels, train stations and other spots from across Ontario's Golden Horseshoe, the stolen vehicles are most commonly dumped at night. And like the Hummer and the Avalanche, the targets of choice are high-end pickup trucks and SUVs made by General Motors.
Mostly they are stolen for their parts. Discovered the next morning - if they are discovered - they have usually been stripped of their wheels and other fixtures and sometimes torched.
Talk to police both on and off the reserve and they will tell you that, like everywhere else, a sizable proportion of the thieves are juveniles who face little or no jail time. And as also happens elsewhere, drugs appear to play a part in fuelling the trade in hot car parts - in particular, demand for the prescription painkiller Oxycontin.
But of the 160,000 cars stolen nationwide in 2006, the Insurance Bureau of Canada reckons that parts from at least 25,000 were resold and recycled, invariably for a fraction of their value.
And by every estimate, the bulk of the vehicles being retrieved from Six Nations were stolen to be "chopped." Expensive wheels - sometimes worth several thousand dollars a set - head the list of the items sought by what police believe to be a loose network of crooked, off-reserve mechanics and auto-body shops.
Considering the price of Diesel fuel, there is a good chance he would have fuelled at the reservation.The reservation is a ten minute ride from his house.
Hopefully police are looking in that area.Very friendly gas station attendants there.
My prayers go out to the Bosma Family.
We use essential cookies to make this site work, and optional cookies to enhance your experience.