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Gas siphoning appears to be isolated

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Photo by Dan Lassiter

All-N-One Autocare at 640 Mallwood Dr. where someone siphoned gasoline out of the vehicles parked outside waiting to be worked on or picked up on Wednesday.

EDGERTON — Jerry Hunt might not have noticed the work of thieves at his auto repair shop, but the hose gave them away.

Someone has been siphoning gas out of vehicles waiting outside All-N-One Autocare, 640 Mallwood Drive, Fulton Township, for about two weeks, Hunt said.

“I’ve noticed it a couple of weekends in a row,” he said. “The one time they left the hose right there that they’d siphoned it off with.”

So far, the culprits have only struck Hunt’s brother’s vehicle, taking between 10 and 20 gallons, Hunt said.

At Thursday’s rate of $3.57 a gallon, that’s between $35 and $70 worth of gas.

The incident appears to be isolated, so far. It’s the only report of gas siphoning the Rock County Sheriff’s Department has received this year, Lt. Gary Groelle said.

Capt. Dan Davis of the Janesville Police Department said he wasn’t aware of any siphoning cases this year in Janesville.

The departments haven’t seen more gas drive-offs than usual either since the price of gas began skyrocketing again, Groelle and Davis said. The sheriff’s department tends to receive a couple of drive-off reports a week, Groelle said.

Groelle recommended buying locked gas caps, available for $10 to $15 from auto parts stores, to prevent siphoning. He advised vehicle owners to keep their vehicles in garages when possible, and to keep outdoor lights on them when not.

Hunt only has a two-bay garage, and he usually has five to seven cars waiting for repair, he said. But he has installed a motion-sensor light and is thinking about buying a security camera.

“Being a small shop, that stuff’s kind of expensive,” he said.

He also plans to start putting locked gas caps on his personal vehicles, he said.