Unsuspecting guests at Lee County hotels have become prime targets for truck thieves - again. Deputies are investigating after two F-350 pickup trucks were stolen from different hotels, at the Comfort Inn on Bonita Beach Road and the Hampton Inn near I-75 and Corkscrew Road.
The Comfort Inn guest woke up early Thursday morning to find that his white F-350 was missing, along with $85,000 worth of welding equipment inside. He told deputies that the truck could be identified by a red stripe on both doors, with red letters spelling PICTSWEET.
About an hour later, a similar crime was reported at the Hampton Inn on Chevrolet Way in Estero. The driver, an employee of Clarity in Broadband LLC, told deputies he had secured his company F-350 the night before, only to find it missing with $10,000 worth of tools inside. That truck is also described as white, but with a beige strip on the lower part of the body.
The crimes are similar to a pair of truck thefts in April, when another Ford F-350 was stolen from the Holiday Inn Express on Interstate Commerce Drive in Fort Myers, and an F-150 from the Embassy Suites on Corkscrew Road. Like the Hampton Inn in Estero, both of those hotels are near I-75.
"If they're right next to a freeway, they can get on and gone at 70, 80 miles an hour in minutes," said Bob Unger of Gatekeepers Access Control Systems.
According to a Lee County Sheriff's report, the truck stolen from the Comfort Inn was parked next to a dumpster. Unger said it's safer to park close to the hotel.
"If there's cameras there, park in a spot near a camera," he said. "But the camera's not going to stop somebody, it catches them. Better to prevent than to prosecute."
He said that it's also a good idea to avoid leaving anything of value visible in a vehicle that might attract a thief's attention.
Fox 4 reached out to management at the Comfort Inn and Hampton Inn to see if they were doing anything to step up security, but had not heard back as of late Friday.
