Thieves allegedly hit the family-owned Fuqua Express Chevron in southwest Houston three times and tried a fourth time before Jerry Thayil chased after them. “The way they did it was very sneaky. They were doing it in front of so many people – so many different customers," Jerry Thayil said. Thayil's family owns the Fuqua Express gas station. He said surveillance video outside of the gas station shows thieves in action.
A green van can be seen in the surveillance video Thayil provided to KHOU 11 News. He said the video shows the way the thieves pulled it off. “They had a trap door in their vehicle and they would put a hose down there and suck it out with the pump,” he said. The alleged thieves – he said – hit his Chevron three times last week and tried for a fourth. “Each time they were there about 15 to 20 minutes ... in a high traffic time," Thayil said.
This happened three days in a row to Houston gas station Fuqua Express, according to KHOU 11. Jerry Thayil, whose family owns the business, told the news station that he found a discrepancy that led him to comb through the store's surveillance footage. It's there that he noticed something strange – a minivan, which looks like a Chrysler Town Country, would park over the tanks' fill ports for 15 to 20 minutes and then drive off.
The thieves got away with about 1,000 gallons of diesel from the store over three days, stealing about 350 gallons a day. This theft has cost the store about $5,000, and it doesn't appear as if the thieves were working alone. Thayil also noticed a lookout vehicle in the surveillance footage – a black Porsche – parked to hide the minivan's illegal act. In total, the heists have cost Thayil and his family about R75,000 ($5,000). The price of gas is hitting his family just as hard as consumers. “In this kind of job, every penny counts. We can’t afford to lose a single more gallon," Thayil said. He said he spoke to Houston police just hours before the alleged attempted fourth robbery on Friday. He's hoping for the public's help and asking anyone with information to call police.
