As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice South/Cen­tral Wayne Mys­tar says po­lice are still search­ing for six bar­rels of gaso­line which dis­ap­peared from the com­pound of the Erin Po­lice Sta­tion last week.

The bar­rels, which con­tained 825 gal­lons of gaso­line val­ued at $9,600, were dis­cov­ered miss­ing last Fri­day. 

They were among 15 blue plas­tic bar­rels that were stored at the south­ern side of the sta­tion’s com­pound for safe­keep­ing, af­ter the po­lice found them on a beach.

Po­lice said around 6 am on April 8, two of­fi­cers were on mo­bile pa­trol along the Erin Beach when they saw 15 bar­rels un­der a 25x25 shed. 

The shed was about ten feet off the road in an open area, along the shore­line, in an un­se­cured lo­ca­tion. 

The of­fi­cers be­came sus­pi­cious and de­cid­ed to in­ves­ti­gate the con­tents and ob­served that the bar­rels were filled with gaso­line. 

De­spite at­tempts by of­fi­cers to as­cer­tain the own­er of the bar­rels, no one gave any in­for­ma­tion or claimed own­er­ship.

Based on in­struc­tions from an in­spec­tor, they seized the bar­rels and took them to the po­lice sta­tion.

The bar­rels were last seen on the sta­tion’s com­pound by one of the of­fi­cers who had seized them around 1 pm on April 10.  How­ev­er, around 8.31 am the fol­low­ing day (April 11), a cor­po­ral dis­cov­ered that six of the bar­rels were miss­ing.

De­spite ex­ten­sive checks on the com­pound and sur­round­ing ar­eas, po­lice were un­able to find the bar­rels. Checks were made for CCTV footage from near­by lo­cal res­i­dences and busi­ness­es and a re­quest was made for po­lice CCTV footage. 

Sgt Taikan is in­ves­ti­gat­ing.  

When con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Mys­tar said he has since re­ceived re­ports from of­fi­cers who worked the par­tic­u­lar shift/s when the bar­rels went miss­ing. Since the in­ves­ti­ga­tion is on­go­ing, he de­clined any fur­ther com­ment on the mat­ter.