EVANGELINE PARISH — Thieves are continuing to target cars for their catalytic converters. An used car dealership in Ville Platte was recently targeted.
A worker at T And T Used Car Dealership was trying to sell someone a car, but he noticed a strange sound when he started the car.
"I started it and realized it was making a loud sound. I exit the car and realized the catalytic converter was cut off," Donald Anderson said.
Business has been operating differently since then. Thieves targeted two of their cars, stealing catalytic converters.
"We have to park every vehicle inside or somewhere else," Anderson said. "We bring them out during the daytime. At night we have to park them back inside and that's with cameras on the outside of this place."
Since thieves are looking for what's on the outside of the car, instead of the inside, it's very hard to prevent it from happening. It also doesn't take much time for the car part to be stolen.
"It took them, for each car, about 4 minutes per car to cut it off," Anderson added.
It's a crime happening nationwide, because the part is made of certain valuable metals, like platinum and palladium.
Some other tips we've reported before: park in well lit areas or by surveillance cameras, and etch a vehicle ID number or license plate ID on the converter in case you need to alert scrap yards that its been stolen.
While it may be tough to prevent a theft from happening, workers at the car dealership are doing their best to protect their cars.
"We have to hide our cars on the inside. We have to scatter our cars all over the place. It don't even look like a car lot anymore, " Anderson said.
