No Rainbow, but Thief Finds a Bucket of Gold on West 48th Street
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Version 0 of 1. Because the bucket is very heavy, the man walks slowly and pauses often. But because the bucket is very heavy, the man keeps walking. The man, seen in a surveillance video, has just taken a black, metal 5-gallon bucket off the back of an armored truck in broad daylight in Midtown Manhattan. The bucket was left unattended when a guard went to the truck’s cab for a moment, the police said, and the man probably did not know what was in it. But he probably had a suspicion. “I think he just seen an opportunity and took the pail and walked off,” Detective Martin Pastor told WNBC-TV, which broadcast the footage on Tuesday. The theft took place on Sept. 29. On the video, the man walks calmly through crowds on West 48th Street, as calmly as a man can walk while lugging a very heavy and perhaps very valuable bucket that does not belong to him. At one point, the man — stocky, maybe in his 50s, wearing a down vest and long-sleeve shirt — rests the bucket on the sidewalk to catch his breath. He crosses Fifth Avenue, heading east. He makes his way to Third Avenue, a distance of a half-mile. It takes him an hour, WNBC said. At Third Avenue and 48th Street, the police said, the man disappears. The bucket contained 86 pounds of gold flakes, worth $1.6 million, the police said. Detective Pastor said the police believe that the man is in Florida. The gold flakes are still at large as well. |