From the Sun Journal of June 5, 2008
Theft victim shoots up suspects' pickup truck
All Joe Lord needed to halt a pair of theft suspects was patience and a shotgun.
The 66-year-old man blew apart a Ford pickup truck Tuesday morning and scared away the couple he said had stolen $3,000 worth of scrap iron, steel and aluminum from his machine shop over the weekend.
Taking aim after more than two days without sleep, Lord shot holes in the front tires of the 2008 Ford F-250, blew out the windshield and rear window and shot up the radiator.
"I disabled the truck," Lord said Wednesday. "That's all I did."
Disabled the truck, forced the suspects to flee on foot and gave police a big head start toward solving the crime, that is.
Investigators from the Kennebec County Sheriff's Office said they tracked down the driver of the truck, Elizabeth Evans of Mount Vernon. The truck is owned by her father.
The girl will be charged with theft, and charges are pending against an accomplice, said Kennebec County Sheriff Randall Liberty.
Lord said that after watching his property on Kimball Pond Road for 56 hours straight, he would have aimed for the suspects themselves if he had seen them.
"It's not my intention to go around shooting people," Lord said. "But if they had been there, I would have shot them, no doubt about it. I was so exhausted."
Exhausted, but by all accounts a good shot with a 12-gauge loaded with buckshot.
Lord said he spotted the truck after returning to his shop for a third time Tuesday. It was parked there with a heap of scrap metal in the bed.
"I didn't do anything until I knew what they were doing," Lord said. "When I saw my steel in the back of the truck, I knew I had to do something."
Lord took aim and the disabling of the truck began.
"I blew out the radiator. I shot the two front tires and the windshield. There was some damage to the back window, too," Lord said. "I put some pellets in the seat. They said I got the water pump and the power steering, but I don't know about that."
None of the shots landed in the body of the truck, Lord said, because that was not his intent. He simply wanted the truck to stay where it was, and that is exactly what happened.
And, there were no more thieves milling around his business.
"A 12-gauge shotgun is pretty intimidating," Lord said. "It echoed for about a quarter-mile down to the lake."
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