Police look for masked men in connection with burglary at Fresno landscaping business

Jason Oliveira Image
Thursday, March 23, 2017
Police looking for masked men wanted in connection with burglary at East Central Fresno landscaping business
Surveillance video shows two men arriving at around 3:00 a.m. Wednesday morning in a U-Haul van.

FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) -- Jose Cuenca described how two crooks broke into his facility and stole about $65,000 worth of equipment.

Cuena owns The Landscaping Masters in East Central Fresno-- he arrived Wednesday morning to find someone had busted the locks on both gates and items were missing.

"It's sad to come and your stuff is gone. It feels like when somebody dies-- you're not going to see them again."

Cuena does have surveillance video which shows two men arriving at around 3:00 a.m. Wednesday morning in a U-Haul van. They use what appears to be a pipe wrench to break the lock to get inside-- they leave shortly after but return an hour later-- prepared to take the loot and this time driving a U-Haul moving vehicle.

Once inside the gate, they hook up a trailer full of lawn equipment to the back of the U-Haul but they weren't done. The suspect's also hot wire a work truck after breaking the driver side window and drive off with another trailer full equipment-- Yessel Cuenca works as the company's secretary.

"There's no respect in that, they obviously came in like it was their place hooked up the trailers and left."

The masked men took off with only the equipment that was in plain sight, they were not able to break into the landscaper's building.

"We have to keep doing business, we have to move on. This is a good lesson-- we have to have better gates or whatever. More security alarms and all that, give it a shot see if its helps or not," said Cuena.

Following Wednesday's break-in the business owner plans to expand his security system to also cover the gates and fencing that surrounds his building.