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Tuesday, April 30, 2024

Tornado Looting

Credit: WDEF CBS Chattanooga, TN
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Tornado Looting
Tornado Looting
Victims of the Easter tornadoes are still coping with looting.

Continues in the areas impacted by easter's tornadoes, residents are continuing to deal with looting problems. news 12's angela moryan spoke with two families affected, and found out how the police are handing the issues.

Naazneen mehtar: "it was unbelievable that someone would actually do this after what our neighborhood's been through."

Even nearly a month after easter's deadly storms, residents in the drake forest neighborhood are still dealing with looters.

Mehtar: "between saturday and tuesday, nobody was at the house.

No contractors, nobody.

On tuesday when we got there, we'd noticed our backdoor had been broken.

And the items that were visible from the window, that is the lawnmower, a little weed eater, and a set a tools, a tool box was taken."

The mehtars aren't the only family that's fallen victim to looters.

People from east brainerd to holly hills and into ooltewah have reported break-ins and stolen items. some have even had chainsaws vanish off the back of their trucks.

Niki schmidtke: "it's just unbelievable.

These people, i mean, we were pretty lucky but some people had injuries and lost everything.

I mean, there were deaths.

And just to think that someone would go use that as an opportunity to go and commit crimes and take from these people who have already had so much taken from them, just really sad."

Chattanooga police say they have made multiple arrests of suspects targeting the tornado area -- and are continuing to enlist extra patrols to keep others at bay.

Mehtar: "honestly, i think the police are doing a great job.

It's just there's so many people unaccounted for in our neighborhood, it's hard control it.

... i'd just like everybody to be extra cautious and say, 'yes, we need to increase our security,' during this rebuild phase, because i don't think that this is the last issue that's going to happen.

It's going to continue until the neighborhood is fully populated again."

Reporting in chattanooga, angela moryan, news 12 now.

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