Police find truck, but no lobster
Police in Montreal have recovered one of the two trucks stolen from a lobster processing plant in northeastern New Brunswick last weekend, but there was no trace of the frozen lobster meat that had been packed inside.
The trucks, carrying about $250,000 worth of lobster, were stolen from outside a warehouse in Saint Simon owned by GEM fisheries.
Going to work on Sunday morning, general manager Steve Foulem noticed they were missing.
The theft was captured on a security camera in the parking lot. Foulem watched the tape and said it was obvious the thieves knew exactly what they were doing.
"This thing is planned, you know. You cannot come over here and steal a quarter of a million dollars worth of lobster just like that … boom it's disappeared. This has to be planned, you know what I mean?"
The two truckloads of lobster were supposed to be delivered to Boston on Tuesday.
Mark Gallagher, who speaks for the RCMP in New Brunswick, says the people who stole the seafood probably had someone lined up to buy it.
"It would most likely be outside the area because around here the cans or packages would be recognized. So they would take it outside the province, possibly outside the country."
Investigators say it's likely the seafood was loaded into several trucks, then sent in different directions.
Gallagher says it's too early to link the theft to organized crime, though police certainly haven't ruled that out as a possibility.