Exclusive Video: Thieves Get Away With 800 Gallons Of Diesel Fuel

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MIAMI (CBSMiami) — New surveillance tape obtained exclusively by CBS4 news shows thieves stealing 800 gallons of diesel fuel from a Southwest Miami-Dade company and the manager of the business says she is worried the criminals will strike again.

Iris Lopez, the manager of One Two Tree pesticide and fertilizer company at 7250 S.W. 42nd Terrace, told CBS4's Peter D'Oench that the criminals struck at 1:45 a.m. on August 17th and spent two hours at her company, stealing the diesel, backpacks and equipment used for pesticide and fertilizer spraying.

Lopez said the company that's located near Bird Road had just purchased the diesel fuel the day before the crime.

One striking image obtained by CBS4 shows the face of one of the suspects at a diesel fuel pump.

Lopez said, "There you can see him and he is basically trying to gain access to the pumps to suck out all the diesel that he recently purchased. He is young in his early 30s or 20s. There are 3 guys who pull up and do this."

"We are shocked," she said. "We just filled up the pumps the day before and for that to happen and for us to lose 800 gallons of diesel and to lose that for our trucks that go out on a daily basis, it was shocking for us to come in and find all of it gone."

"I know the loss in total between the fence that was cut and the stolen diesel and equipment, the loss was about $5,000," said Lopez. "We were all shocked about it and so were our customers and the routes we run we were late and that hurts the company and we lost production for some time."

"It started when they showed up in a pickup truck and parked on the side of the street and they waited for awhile to scope everything out," said Lopez. "Then they pulled up right next to the diesel tanks and they ended up cutting the fence as you can see on this video, they started using work pumps to attach to the tanks to switch over from their tanks to ours."

Lopez demonstrated for D'Oench outside the company exactly what the thieves did.

"This is where they ended up taking their pump and attaching in to their truck by the back of the fence and sucking up all the fuel," she said. "There was a camera there and they took that."

She said, "Then they went in to the shop and they took equipment for tree trimming and estimate spraying and back packs."

She hopes the criminals will be caught.

"It would mean a lot," she said. "I am pretty sure that we are not the only ones going through this. What we want it to put a stop to it because if it happens once it can happen again. And we want to make sure we will stop this from happening again."

Miami-Dade Police Detective Alvaro Zabaleta said detectives are actively investigating this case.

Anyone with information that can help police should call Miami-Dade Crime Stoppers at (305) 471-TIPS (8477).