Photo: Akron Police Department
Northeast Ohio police are on the lookout for a 58-foot-long bridge that was stolen from Middlebury Run Park.
Akron police received a call about the stolen bridge last month, around the time city officials hoped to repurpose it as part of a restoration project. Law enforcement officials are still scratching their heads trying to figure out what the thieves want with the bridge that was left in a field along Seiberling Street pending the restoration project. Lt. Mike Miller told Cleveland’s Fox 8 News in a report on Tuesday (December 14):
“It could be used for a variety of different things to include as simple as landscaping or they could use it for some other engineering project, some other large scale project … The bridge is almost all polymer I’m told and really just connected by some bolts, so if you have any equipment, sockets or anything of that nature, it wouldn’t have been very difficult at all to start the process of disassembling that.”
Miller called on the community to help solve the “whodunit.” Here's what police want citizens to know, according to information shared to the agency's Facebook page (along with photos of the missing bridge):
“The pictured 58’ long, 10’ wide, & 6’ high bridge was formerly installed at Middlebury Run Park. When a wetland restoration was done there it was removed and stored in a field on the west side of Seiberling St. (behind the Harwick Standard Corporation). On November 3rd, it was discovered that someone had cleared brush around it and removed the treated deck boards. On November 11th, the entire structure was gone. If you have any information or knowledge of the whereabouts of this bridge, please contact Akron Police Detective D. Forney at 330-375-2464”