PORT ANGELES — It wasn’t the first time Guy Miller had his trucks vandalized — the gasoline sucked right out of the tanks.
It was the third.
One time the thieves left a hose in the gas tank.
Frustrated and angry, Miller, the owner of a wood hauling business, called the Clallam County Sheriff’s Department on Tuesday and reported that a truck parked on his property on the 250000 block of U.S. Highway 101 had its gasoline stolen last weekend.
“It seems like they know, and then they hit me,” Miller said.
On Tuesday, the Sheriff’s Department received four complaints of gas theft, according to PenCom logs.
It’s no coincidence that gasoline thefts increase as the price per gallon of the U.S. economy’s lifeblood inches past the $3 mark.
After Hurricane Katrina pounded the Gulf of Mexico and disrupted energy supplies last August, the price climbed upward and a spike of gas thefts were reported in Clallam County, said Sheriff Joe Martin.
“Here we’re up again, and more so,” Martin said.
