MOSCOW, June 22 (RIA Novosti) – In an age of intricate wrongdoing, it can be refreshing to find a criminal eschewing complex machinations in favor of a hands-on approach – as a local man did in Russia’s northern Vologda region, stealing a small metal bridge for scrap metal.
The culprit led local police on what could well have been the most anticlimactic investigation in the history of Vologda, given that he dragged the bridge with his tractor, leaving a trail all the way to his house.
The criminal turned out to be a 23-year-old local man recently released on parole, regional police said in a statement Friday, without specifying his name or previous offense.
The man faces two more years behind bars over the story. He managed to dismantle the bridge with a welding machine, but did not have the time to sell the pieces.
The incident took place in the village of Frolovo, some 50 kilometers northeast of the city of Vologda.
The disappearance of the bridge left the locals without access to a spring that serves as a reserve water supply whenever the water tower in the village breaks, police said.
Russian police have blamed unusual disappearances on scrap metal collectors in the past, including the unsolved thefts of several steam locomotives in Krasnoyarsk Region in 2005 and a bicycle of a circus bear – a heavy steel structure unfit for human use – in Tatarstan last May.
