Shizuoka man arrested for stealing 50 fire hose nozzles

Some men just want to watch the world burn.

It is often said that one man’s trash is another’s treasure, but it turns out that one man’s fire hose nozzle is also another’s treasure. Whether the motive was monetary or simply passion is not yet known, but police in Shizuoka have finally arrested a 57-year-old for a rash of fire-hose-nozzle thefts.

The original arrest took place on 29 August, when the man was caught attempting to steal a fire hose nozzle in Kannami Town, Shizuoka Prefecture. The man admitted to the charges but remained in custody as police investigated similar thefts of 81 nozzles throughout the eastern part of the prefecture.

A search of places connected to the suspect revealed a stash of roughly 50 other fire hose nozzles. They then began to check surveillance cameras in victimized areas and found footage of him taking a nozzle in another part of Kannami earlier that month. This led to his re-arrest on 18 September.

Fire hoses are often kept in unlocked boxes near hydrants, like we can see in the Street View below. It makes them easy targets for people who don’t mind putting people’s lives at serious risk for a little hunk of metal worth about eight bucks as scrap metal.

Police are currently trying to link him and his dozens of nozzles to the many other thefts that took place and uncover his motive. It just so happened that a separate series of thefts involving 57 fire hose nozzles occurred in Hiroshima Prefecture this year, as well. The suspect there admitted to selling the nozzles for money, but he also wasn’t hanging on to his nozzles like this suspect oddly was.

Readers of the news online were also struggling to understand his motive, since the nozzles probably wouldn’t bring in a great deal of cash together, but would likely ensure the book was thrown at him, since the scale of his thefts created a serious risk to public safety.

“So, he was collecting them instead of selling them for scrap?”
“I don’t get it. If it was for his personal use, wouldn’t a shower head be more effective?”
“I can kind of see the desire to collect those things.”
“Frankly, those things are a little cool.”
“These crimes won’t stop until businesses stop buying these kinds of metal.”
“Since those are for protecting the community, I think he’s facing more than theft charges.”
“They’re all basically the same thing. Does he enjoy comparing the stains on them?”
“If he was planning on selling them, why didn’t he already?”
“People have all kinds of fetishes, we can’t rule this out…”

I am going to rule out sexual reasons for the sake of argument and guess that he was perhaps stockpiling them for a rainy day rather than trying to cash in on his thefts right away for some pocket change like the Hiroshima thief seemed to have done.

Stealing 81 fire hose nozzles in a year, causing an estimated 800,000 yen (US$5,400) in damages, and making national headlines for it, would make them hard to sell off right away. But wait a year or two until the heat dies down, and he could finally walk away scot-free with his big score of… 30,000 yen (US$200) or so in scrap brass and aluminum?

It hardly seems worth what must have been a fair bit of work and risk to do.  He could have gotten virtually any job or even just sat on a corner with a paper cup, and he would have made more in a shorter span of time. So, it seems like we can’t eliminate the possibility that he was just some kind of collector, thrill-seeker, or fetishist after all.

Source: SBS News, NHK News Web, Hachima Kiko, FNN Prime Online
Featured image: Shizuoka Prefectural Police
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