Sale car theft leads the police to recover a treasure trove of stolen parts and property

A car stolen from a house burglary in Sale has led police to discover parts of fifteen more vehicles in the rear of an old mill in Oldham worth nearly £350,000.

The car was stolen in a spate of car thefts occurring nearly every day in Sale in early June.

On June 7th we reported on Sale Today, that two cars had been stolen overnight from a driveway of a house on Grosvenor Road.

At the time a spokesman for GMP said:” The cars were stolen between  5pm Tuesday evening and 8am this morning . The thieves gained entry by damaging the rear patio doors.”

A Black Mercedes CLS was taken along with a Grey Ford ECO Sport.  The next day  police tracked one of the cars to a unit at the rear of Maple Mill, in Groby Street, in Oldham.

When police raided the unit they discovered that the car had been almost completely stripped of its parts. Officers searched the unit and found parts from fifteen other recently stolen vehicles from Greater Manchester and surrounding areas such as Lancashire, Cheshire, Derbyshire, and Merseyside, with a collective value of £350,000.  Two men, aged 22 and 35, were arrested on suspicion of burglary and have since been released under investigation.

A number of items were recovered, all of which have been returned to their owners, but police say they have still not found the owner of a guitar  which has stickers on the back that spell “EVIE CE”.

Police Constable Jonathan Griffiths, of GMP’s Vehicle Intelligence Unit said;’ This guitar is the only item stolen in this audacious string of crimes that is yet to be traced to its rightful owner.

The case has a toy cat attached and the guitar has distinctive stickers on it. ” Someone must know who “EVIE CE might be.  If you think you know the owner of this guitar, then please get in touch so we can reunite them with stolen property. Anyone with information should contact police on 0161 856 6497, quoting incident number 980, of Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111,” said PC Griffiths.