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PELHAM MANOR, N.Y. Pelham Manor police responded to a call Thursday at 5:58 a.m. from a security guard at the Fairway market on Pelham Parkway. The guard told police that a man had attempted to steal used cooking oil from a bin in the parking lot at the rear of the store.
The guard described the man as an African-American wearing an orange shirt and blue jeans. The man tried to position his white van adjacent to the loading dock but store workers confronted him. He fled on Boston Post Road toward New Rochelle without taking any oil.
The employee said he wanted police to be aware of the situation even though the man took no oil.
The guard called police again at 8:01 a.m. to inform them that the man had returned and began stealing oil from a dumpster in the rear of the store. He said this time the white van contained two African-American men, approximately age 50, wearing dark clothing.
The men in the van attached a hose from a pump in the van into the oil container that Fairway uses to hold used vegetable oil and began to siphon the liquid. Fairway sells the oil to a recycling company where the guard said the van was at approximately 6:05 a.m.
The workers again chased off the men who fled south into Mount Vernon. The men had already left when police arrived, but officers ran a DMV check and found an address for the vehicle.
Police went to the Mount Vernon address and saw the car parked with no occupants. An African-American man in the house told police that the vehicle belonged to his wife and that she was the only person who drove it that day.
Police called Westchester Collision to impound the car. The man said that only his wife had the keys and she was not home. Officers told the man to tell his wife to contact Pelham Manor police about the issue.
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