Thief Stole Cars And Set Dealership On Fire

A car dealership in Anderson County, South Carolina was gutted by a fire recently, but authorities later learned a single thief who stole several cars set the blaze. Likely the man set the fire to help cover up evidence of his crime, although the sheriff’s office later tracked down 53-year-old Charles Chambers of Spartanburg and arrested him.

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Now Chambers is facing a long list of criminal charges. It turns out if you don’t just steal cars but also set fire to a building, you’re in bigger trouble when caught. We already knew that but wonder if Chambers did.

Investigators were able to determine at least nine cars were stolen from the dealership by Chambers, so he was enterprising. He stashed them at different locations in the area, some out in the open and others hidden away. The guy did all that by himself, which admittedly is pretty amazing.

The sheriff’s office was able to find all of those vehicles. A report from WSPA doesn’t indicate if GPS trackers allowed them to pinpoint the locations, but since some of the cars weren’t just parked on the side of the road, we’re thinking that’s likely.  

Another thing Chambers doesn’t seem to understand is most security cameras these days streams footage to cloud servers, which obviously aren’t stored at the same location as the cameras. Back in the day criminals could set fire to a building and it would destroy the recordings from surveillance cameras, plus physical evidence like fingerprints, covering up their crime entirely.

But the sheriff’s office was able to single out Chambers since he was identified in the surveillance footage. Now it’s just a matter of determining exactly how the fire was started and building a case against Chambers.

We just hope this isn’t a trend among car thieves as they hit dealerships.

Image via WSPA 7News/YouTube

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