Storage Facility Ransacked By Thieves

Burglars strike nearly 80 storage units, rummaging through years of memories and stealing property.

The search is on to find the culprits, and it's a story you saw only on Fox Monday night.

Owners are still trying to figure out what to do next, Fox 29's Julie Kim reported from Northeast Philadelphia.

Thieves broke into dozens and dozens of storage units at the Public Storage on Aramingo Avenue. They took TVs, tools and anything else of value.

The renters are fuming and frustrated. They said they're getting no help from the company they paid to take care of their things.

"I live on a small income. And it's hard to pay every month for this to be in storage for my son and my granddaughter," said one of those customers, Sue Sanders.

Families looked down a long corridor of hardship.

"It's totally ransacked. It's like 70, 80 units where everything is everywhere," said another customer, Fatima King. "This is only part of it, look."

Within the maze of units at this public storage building, it looks like a large-scale jigsaw puzzle of peoples belongings -- pieces here, pieces there and a lot of missing parts.

Sanders called it a "mess all over," adding, "They took the TV. They took the little girl (my granddaughter's) bike. And the one great box with a lot of tools in it, Craftsman tools."

"I lost a lot of stuff, a lot of stuff – computers, a lot of computers," said another victim, Carl Coulter, noting that he used the space for his business.

Police are still investigating but said it looks like the thieves broke in through the back door and used whatever they could find and went to work.

"This is not my crowbar. This is what we found in here. And the girl around the corner says it's hers," Coulter said.

Renters believe the thieves toiled here for hours, and after they got their fill, they had enough time to leave their calling card, graffiti, inside and outside.

Renters said they don't know what to do now.

"We just came through the back door. There's no lock on it. What's going to happen to our stuff," King asked.

Fox 29 News tried to get answers from public storage, but were told to leave: "Private property, not allowed in here. Come on," one man said.

Then, the employees left, leaving the families with a mess, unanswered questions and heartache.

"For this to happen, they can get back what's gone," Sanders said.

Kim contacted the public storage corporate offices in California and tried to get some answers for the renters, but the phone call was not returned.

On Monday night there was a security guard on site but, of course, renters said it's a bit late for that.