Iron Thieves at Work in Mississippi Town

Tom and Glenda Beard moved home to Vicksburg, Miss., and a 142-year-old house a little more than two years ago. On Friday, they wondered if they’d made the right decision.

The Vicksburg Post reports their cast-iron mailbox, the pole it sat on and even the concrete in which it was set had been stolen overnight – the latest in a rash of thefts of iron across Vicksburg.

“They took it, concrete and all, put it in a wheelbarrow and left,” said Tom Beard, a former assistant chief with the Vicksburg Fire Department who returned to the city with his wife, Glenda, from Pensacola, Fla., in 2010. “My wife is very upset and she’s scared. If they’ll come in your front yard, they’ll come in your house.”

Read more: The Vicksburg Post – Stolen mailbox latest in a rash of scrap iron thefts One man arrested another sought for stealing and selling city storm drain covers

The theft was reported two days after an Edwards man was arrested for selling stolen iron city storm drain covers and on the same morning that 10 more drain covers were stolen.

One of the covers was stolen about a block from the Beards’ home on South Street.

“Before we came back to Vicksburg and the house that has been in my family since 1870, I talked with the police chief about the house and neighborhood and was told crime would not be a problem,” Beard said.

“But we have to call the police all the time for the apartments across the street,” he said. “It’s the drugs and the alcohol, and they’ve made the neighborhood terrible.”

Police Chief Walter Armstrong said the apartments have been a problem but crime reports have dropped recently.