Company offers reward to locate culprits of vandalism, theft

Slusarski Excavating and Paving of Adrian is offering a $1,000 reward for information that leads to an arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for the theft of a paving machine from a construction site at Tecumseh Middle School last week. The company had been doing paving work behind the school.“It must have happened sometime Thursday night because we came in Friday morning and noticed our roller was missing,” said Brian Slusarski. “We saw where it had been driven all over the asphalt and some gates and a backstop had been damaged and as we looked around, we couldn’t find our roller. We started looking a little farther out and noticed it was in [Evans Creek].”The softball field and football field both sustained damage. By appearances, had the machine veered right, there could have been extensive damage to the girls varsity softball field, but the equipment veered left instead.Slusarski said company workers called the Tecumseh Police Department right away, at about 8:30 a.m. Friday, once they saw the malicious damage and missing equipment.“Officer Chad Rodgers came out and he had to complete his investigation before we could remove the roller, but we had it out by about 12:30,” Slusarski said. The stolen piece of heavy equipment is valued at approximately $140,000. Slusarski said he could not comment on how the equipment may have been started or other details, as that was part of the ongoing investigation.“This is the first time this has ever happened to us,” he said. “And it’s the last time we want it to happen.”Slusarski said the company decided to offer a reward to help locate the culprits of the vandalism and theft.“We all went to school in Tecumseh and we value our relationship with Tecumseh,” he said. “We thought this is the least we could do to see if we could help find out who would do something like that.”Anyone with information is asked to call the Tecumseh Police Department at 423.7494.