Fresh updates about that Brink’s truck jewelry heist are deepening the mystery. Either there’s something bogus about the reported facts or the truck full of jewels traveled an average speed of 140 mph. That driver must really have needed to pee because, along one stretch, “covering that distance in a little more than a quarter of an hour would require driving at speeds upward of 200 mph.”
Brink’s breaks laws of physics
Over two months ago, a whole bunch of jewelry was removed from a Brink’s big-rig, parked at a truck stop along the Grapevine. The company refuses to pay the multi-millions claimed stolen, because all of the shippers radically under-declared the value of their goods. They did that in order to get a better shipping rate and got what they paid for.
Shippers who didn’t want to pay for more security are suddenly acting all surprised they were robbed. On top of that, the official facts and figures aren’t adding up.
The LA Times reports that “questions are now swirling around the timeline laid out in a Brink’s legal filing and Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department documents, which suggest an almost impossibly swift journey for the tractor-trailer.”
This much is known: a Brink’s big rig loaded with jewels that were in the International Gem and Jewelry Show departed the San Mateo County Event Center for a storage yard about 370 miles south in downtown L.A.
From there, the players in the case disagree.https://t.co/Zshlco2WxC
— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) September 17, 2022
Somewhere between $10 and $100 million in jewelry was stolen.
The Brink’s truck was supposed to be delivering goods related to the International Gem and Jewelry Show. The guards “departed the San Mateo County Event Center on July 11 for a storage yard about 370 miles south in downtown L.A.” That’s where the stories start conflicting.
In the suit over the value of the goods, the carrier officially declares “that its two drivers made the roughly 298-mile, late-night trek from San Mateo to the Flying J Travel Center in Lebec in about 2 hours, 4 minutes, even fitting in a stop along Interstate 5.” Whipping out a handy dandy pocket calculator and plugging in the numbers for Newton’s classic Rate x Time = Distance means to cover 300 miles in 2 hours takes a rate of 150 mph. We rounded the numbers so when the Times calls it “speeds upward of 140 mph,” they aren’t exaggerating.
Doesn’t make any sense
Following the speed limit means the route should take more than four hours to drive. According to a lawyer for the jewelers, Jerry Kroll, “the sequence of events described by Brink’s doesn’t make any sense.” He thinks someone is feeding them fertilizer. “Why aren’t we being told what happened here? This can’t be. Our clients deserve an explanation. The victims suffered a life-altering theft.”
Adding insult to the injury, “they are given a set of facts that doesn’t add up.” Even stranger, “the vehicle stopped at the Buttonwillow rest area about 1:49 a.m. so one of the drivers could use the bathroom, and then continued on to the Flying J, reaching it about 16 minutes later.” That means “driving at speeds upward of 200 mph.”
Everyone is trying to give the benefit of the doubt. “It is unclear whether the improbability of the timeline laid out by Brink’s and the Sheriff’s Department could be attributed to a simple misstatement or another mundane explanation.”
That’s their story and they’re sticking to it. In fact they use the same excuse to account for “the timing of authorities’ response to the crime, in which thieves stole 22 bags of booty while, according to Brink’s, one of the drivers snoozed inside his vehicle’s sleeping berth and the other was getting food at the Flying J.”
That guard must sleep like a tardigrade. In their defense, the carrier admits there was no alarm to go off, but they didn’t like talking about their security procedures.
Upon “his return 27 minutes later at 2:32 a.m., the driver discovered that the 18-wheeler had been compromised.” Deputies responded to a “vehicle burglary call for service” at the truck stop around 3:56 a.m. and that makes everyone wonder who was doing what for a missing hour.
