Storage unit owners seeking answers after string of thefts

LUBBOCK, Texas — Lawrence Piemontese said he owned a restaurant in New Deal, and after it closed during COVID, he put his leftover property in a storage unit on North Quaker and Clovis Highway.

On September 6, Piemontese filed a police report for burglary. The report includes a suspect, but hasn’t led to anyone being charged. Piemontese said he isn’t the only one with missing items from his unit either.

“We don’t even know how many have been robbed,” he said. “Somebody took all the stuff, cut locks. It’s looking real suspect.”

In August, Caprock Self Storage—formerly known as AAA Storage—came under new management.

“We don’t know when exactly all the thefts happened. We know that it was happening before it was purchased from the current buyer,” said Lisa Moore, who is part of the new management group. “In talking to the police and some of the other tenants, there have been thefts going on for it sounds like several years.”

Moore said they found several units with broken locks, only to find some of the missing items in an unlocked unit. Moore said they have since evicted the owner of the units where they found the missing items.

“We knew we were taking over a distressed asset,” she said. “We didn’t realize this level of stuff that we came upon. It definitely was kind of a can of worms.”

Piemontese said the new management has been very helpful, but thousands of dollars worth of items are still missing.

“I’ve got antique pictures, thrift store pictures,” he said. “I’ve got a PA system that’s gone, microphones, monitors.”

Feathers Murray, another victim of the thefts, said she’s missing things too.

“We moved here in May of 2009 from California. We have a big garage and everything was very methodical,” she said. “Whenever I opened it up, it was destroyed. In fact, we’ve been out there for five days in a row, and there’s glass, and it’s just so many things have just been destroyed.”

Management gave the groups access to the two lockers to retrieve their stolen belongings last Wednesday. Officers with LPD came to observe, but no arrests have been made in the case.

Before Moore’s operation took over, tenants reported little to no security. Without surveillance footage, police have told the group there is not much they can do.

“The person who had the unit with the stolen stuff in it obviously claimed they didn’t steal anything, and we couldn’t prove anything. We don’t have the ability to press charges,” Moore said.

However, since taking over the property, Moore said that they have worked hard to upgrade the security.

“We’ve cleaned everything up,” she said. “We have cameras all over the place there now. We have the gate. We know exactly who’s coming in, who’s coming out.”