A thief stole nearly 500 gallons of heating oil from the exterior tank of the Levi E. Coe Library in Middlefield, Connecticut, the night of December 17.
“There was no heat. I thought the furnace was broken,” said Library Director Mary Dattilo in the December 26 Middletown Press. But a repairman who came to check the system discovered that the tank was empty, even though it had just been filled two weeks earlier.
Refilling the tank and installing a new locking cap—“so it can’t happen again,” said Dattilo—cost the library $850 from its general fund. “We have to make it up,” Dattilo noted. “We’re a small library with a small budget.”
Posted January 2, 2004.