Corona man sentenced for stealing fuel from Redlands cement company

Corona man sentenced for stealing fuel from Redlands cement company San Bernardino County PE.com Southern California News News for Inland Southern California

After deportation - keep an eye out for his wife - Catch his ass again!

10:00 PM PDT on Monday, March 17, 2008

By JOHN F. BERRYThe Press-Enterprise

SAN BERNARDINO - An illegal immigrant living in Corona will be deported to Mexico after he serves the six-month jail sentence he received Monday for stealing more than $11,000 worth of diesel fuel from a Redlands cement factory.

David Perez Toledo, 55, was sentenced in San Bernardino County Superior Court after accepting a plea agreement Feb. 15 and pleading guilty to receiving stolen property and brandishing a weapon.

On Jan. 28, Toledo was arrested on Interstate 10 in Redlands in a 2004 Ford F-350 pickup equipped with a 200-gallon fuel tank, a second 150-gallon tank and a pump, generator and hoses for siphoning fuel.

Toledo's sentencing report states that he eventually admitted stealing diesel to fuel his business, in which he drove around Southern California to service and repair large trucks.

"This isn't like somebody taking a siphon hose and tapping off a neighbor's car," Deputy District Attorney Sean McNally said. "He was going to sell it somewhere."

Toledo claimed to have stolen fuel from Robertson's Ready Mix, in the Santa Ana River wash at 8353 Alabama St., on three different occasions, his sentencing report said.

The plant has video showing Toledo entering the plant on 10 occasions and successfully stealing fuel on six, a Robertson's representative said in the report.

The business put its loss at $11,430 -- 3,000 gallons at $3.81 a gallon.

A Probation Department analysis was skeptical that Robertson's would ever see any reimbursement because Toledo is an illegal immigrant who will be deported to Mexico after serving his jail term.

"Hopefully, the defendant will remain in Mexico and the cement plant will no longer be the victim of his thefts," the sentencing report said.

A woman who answered the phone at Robertson's on Monday refused to forward a call seeking comment to any company official.

Toledo admitted entering the United States illegally in 2000, his sentencing report said.

"If returned to Mexico, he does intend to return to the United States to care for his ill wife," the report said.
His wife, Ana Salinas, reached by phone Monday, declined to comment.

Shortly before Toledo's Jan. 28 arrest, a Robertson's employee spotted someone in a Ford F-350 stealing fuel at the plant about 11:30 p.m. The employee called 911 and attempted to stop the pickup before it fled, a Redlands police report said.
The employee, speaking with police with his cell phone, followed the truck onto Interstate 10, the report said. Toledo stopped near University Street, got out of the truck and yelled at the employee while holding an object, the report said.
Redlands police arrived within moments and arrested Toledo, the report said. Officers found a 20-inch machete in his truck, the report said.

Toledo, who was wearing a Robertson's work shirt at the time, told a Redlands officer that he wore that shirt so he would not get his own dirty, the report said.

Toledo claimed that a plant employee helped him steal the fuel, the report said.

Court records do not show any arrests of Robertson's employees in connection with the case.