How Does an Entire Bridge Go Missing?



Police in North Beaver Township, Pennsylvania are scratching their heads right now. Why? A 50-foot long, 20-foot wide steel bridge just disappeared. How? Apparently, some very bold criminals just up and stole it.

Stealing a bridge, as you'd imagine, is a pretty complicated crime. This isn't some 90s era magic trick people. The local police suspect that the bridge robbers worked at this for over a month. They presumably used a blow torch to cut the corrugated steel and then somehow moved the pieces—steel beams and such— to sell for scrap metal. That couldn't have been easy as each foot was estimated to weigh hundreds of pounds. But why oh why would you even bother stealing a bridge? Because the scrap metal is estimated to be $100,000. Oh.

But even knowing how it happened, I'm still left wondering, how does this happen!? It's a crime that's so far out there that no one really knows what from how and who from why. In fact, police say the bridge went missing some time between September 27th and October 5th. That's a pretty long range for something that big to go missing, right?

And who in the right mind would look at a bridge and go hey, I think I can take that down. How do they transport it? Who are they selling it to? And how come no one noticed earlier? (this has a more reasonable answer, it's deep in the woods and the bridge is an old railroad bridge). Will they re-build the bridge? Were the robbers really there for a month? Are they going to steal another one? Is this going to set off a bridge stealing bonanza? Hey, I'd actually like that. Life would be more exciting if more bridges got stolen. Robbing bridges is the new black.

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