Three people from Worcester are facing felony charges after Beverly police say they caught them red-handed, hose in hand, siphoning used cooking oil from two Cabot Street restaurants early Saturday morning. Officers found the group next to a rented van on Cox Court, where investigators say a pump and three large storage tanks were loaded inside, ready to haul away grease worth an estimated $2,750.
The arrests capped off a chain of neighborhood vigilance that started when a nearby resident noticed a suspicious group lingering outside a Cabot Street business near its cooking-oil storage containers, according to NBC Boston. That neighbor alerted the business owner, who then reviewed surveillance footage before calling police. The oil had been taken from containers behind Anchor Pub & Grille and Beverly House of Pizza, two longtime neighborhood eateries that sit side by side near the Essex Bridge and keep their storage tanks along Cox Court, as reported by CBS News.
According to Boston 25 News, the neighbor actually snapped a photo of the rental van with a hose running directly into one of the restaurant’s storage tanks before flagging down the owner, who then pulled up the remote camera footage and dialed 911. That timeline of quick, camera-assisted detection is what let officers arrive while the trio was still working the hose — and still on scene to be arrested.
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Beverly police identified the suspects as 18-year-old Jassiel Benitez Diaz along with a 17-year-old and a 16-year-old, all residents of Worcester — a city more than 50 miles west of Beverly, according to the Beverly Police Department. Worcester is more than 50 miles west of Beverly…