Thieves have made off with two newspaper trucks in the D.C. area recently, including a van containing more than 20,000 copies of The Washington Examiner.
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The thefts do not appear to be related, but the incidents highlight the dangers workers face in the dead of night while most of the region sleeps.
Juan Mariaca was dropping copies of The Washington Examiner at the Shady Grove Metro station about 2 a.m. Thursday when he was approached by two men.
One of them offered Mariaca $30 for a ride into D.C. The 41-year-old newspaperman explained to them that he was working. That’s when one of the men hopped in the van, which had its engine still running, and drove away.
“I was a little bit scared, but I’m OK now,” Mariaca said.
It was Mariaca’s first stop of the night, and his black 2003 Chevrolet Express cargo van carried a full load of Examiner papers. Some of the roughly 24,000 copies spilled out the back of the vehicle, leaving a trail for police to follow.
On Friday, Mariaca’s van had not been recovered and police were still looking for the culprits.
On Jan. 24, someone made off with a van belonging to a husband-and-wife team delivering copies of the Express newspaper to an apartment complex in Alexandria.
In this case, the van has been recovered and police think they know the identity of the culprit, said Paul Carr, zone manager for Express.
A husband and wife had split up to carry the papers to different part of the apartment complex and left the engine running. The wife returned in time to see a man get in the van and drive away.
The van was discovered in Prince George’s County. Its TV and radio had been ripped out.
Police said the culprit is a man who had been just released from the nearby Alexandria jail, Carr said. A photo taken of the man as he checked out matched the woman’s description of the culprit, Carr said.
“It was a kind of a unique deal,” Carr said. “The guy gets out of jail and has no way to get home. Suddenly he finds a van with the engine on and he takes it.”
