Suspects trash
ATM with stolen
refuse truck

Police are looking at surveillance
tapes to try to identify the pair

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By Nelson Daranciang
ndaranciang@starbulletin.com

Honolulu police are looking for at least two suspects who devised an elaborate plan to steal an automatic teller machine from Waianae Mall yesterday but left empty-handed.

Police believe the suspects stole a garbage truck Friday night or early Saturday morning from the Kapolei area. Over the weekend, the thieves welded a device with a metal plate and chains to the device in the front of the truck normally used to lift Dumpsters.

About 3:30 a.m. yesterday, police said the suspects used the truck to lift the automatic teller machine bolted into the sidewalk in front of Blockbuster Video store in Waianae Mall.

The suspects were able to break the cash machine free from the sidewalk. However, police said the ATM fell on its side, making it difficult for the suspects to lift even with the modifications they had made to the truck.

By that time police, alerted by the automatic teller machine's alarm, arrived.

The suspects, two males believed to be in their 30s, abandoned the truck and fled on foot.

Police said their actions, as the suspects repeatedly rammed the truck into the ATM, were recorded by a surveillance video camera in the Blockbuster Video store and by the one in the ATM.

Police are looking at the videos to try to identify the suspects.

The Blockbuster store reopened at 5 p.m. after workers placed boards over the windows broken in the theft attempt, said Paul Thorpe, Blockbuster Video Hawaii director of operations.

Thorpe said the company has yet to assess the damage from yesterday's incident.