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Food rescue organisation, Second Harvest, posted a press release thanking the community for their support after their delivery trucks were tampered with and left out of service. Seven Second Harvest trucks had their catalytic converters stolen and exhaust systems damaged earlier in October. This rendered the organisation unable to deliver food donations to nonprofit groups throughout the Toronto area.
According to Toronto Police Service (TPS) statements, officers responded to a call in the East Mall and North Queen St. area in Etobicoke to report a theft. The call reported that on Oct.11, two suspects had cut through a fence around the Second Harvest parking lot and proceeded to steal catalytic converters, damaging the trucks in the process. A separate news release stated that one suspect has been arrested in connection to the theft. The lead detective, TPS 22 Division Inspector Jeff Bangild, has commented in an email to OTR that police are still searching for the remaining suspect and that no further thefts of this nature have been reported in the area since.
“There are different reasons why people would engage with that sort of behaviour,” said Claudio Colaguori, a criminology professor at York University.
“Generally, thefts are driven by profit,” he explained. “When someone steals someone else’s Range Rover, they want it so they can give it over to a higher level criminal where it gets shipped overseas for profit.”
In Second Harvest’s statement, they said they were able to maintain their deliveries thanks to a combination of volunteer vehicles and monetary donations to pay for rental transportation. It also said that the deliveries to the over 337 nonprofit groups who receive food donations from Second Harvest were met without delay.
Stefanie Cepuch, a program organiser for the Church of the Messiah food bank, commented that their nonprofit was “not impacted by the vandalism” and attributes this lack of impact to the speed at which Second Harvest was able to acquire and utilise their truck replacements.
Giao Chau, a communications manager at Second Harvest, says that they received offers of assistance and donations immediately after news of the theft broke out. As a result, Second Harvest only missed two deliveries on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, two days after the thefts.
Chau adds that as of Nov. 3, six of the seven damaged trucks have since been repaired and are in use again. These repairs were paid in part by the monetary donations given to Second Harvest by both public volunteers and private companies.
Reporter, OTR, F2026.
Reporter, OTR, F2026.
