Thieves ransack over 60 storage units in South Bend

SOUTH BEND, Ind. – According to customers thieves broke into the Mini Storage Depot at 6482 West Brick Road and ransacked 62 storage units early Wednesday morning.

The depot has 24-hour access, customer Richard Klatt was there going through his things late Tuesday night.  Klatt has a heart condition and when he got dizzy from his work he decided to take a nap in the back of his van.  At around 2:30 a.m. he was awoken by police officers who had been called to the scene.

"All of a sudden I hear banging, banging, banging on the window,” Klatt described.  “They bashed out the window, glass is flying in my face and I'm like ‘oh, my God," and I'm screaming."

Klatt said officers dragged him out of the van, handcuffed him and held him until they determined he wasn’t involved in the break-in.  He didn’t know what had happened until he was released and saw dozens of units with their doors torn off and property scattered all over the ground.

"I think there's two ways of looking at it, I'm glad I was there so they didn't get in my unit to tear all my stuff out and none of the units got broken into past where I was at so other people were very lucky,” Klatt explained looking at the broken window of his van.  “But, I'm a big loser here."

Klatt isn’t happy with police to say the least and said he was in contact with a lawyer about how he was treated.  But, he’s also upset that through the course of the day he heard many customers complain that they hadn’t been told about the break-in and didn’t find out about it until they stopped in at their storage units.

"They say, ‘what's the commotion?’ and I say a big, big break and entering last night and this guy just takes off and he wanted to go check out his unit and he comes back and he says, ‘yeah I got it too, they never even called me,’” Klatt described. “What a mess."

ABC 57 was unable to get in contact with management at Mini Storage Depot for comment.