Thieves Steal Entire U-Hauls Leaving Families With Nothing

Kathleen Zini and her family had nothing left but the keys to their U-Haul after thieves stole their truck and everything in it.

“Everything we own just gone like that overnight,” the young mother told The Reveal investigators.

Just before Christmas, the family was moving from Florida to Alabama. They decided to stop at a hotel for the night in Macon, Ga. Locked inside the 26-foot U-Haul truck were all of the family’s household belongings.

The parents said they chose Macon to rest themselves and their three young children because they feared the crime in a big city like Atlanta. However, avoiding the big city did nothing to protect them from the thieves.

The following day, Zini said, “my husband’s looking out the window, and he said, ‘the U-Haul’s gone.”

Around 11:23 p.m., the hotel’s surveillance video shows three men walking towards the truck. The three men could start the truck, without keys, and within minutes were able to drive off with the truck and all of its belongings.

The family had no insurance other than the U-Haul’s policy because the closing on their home still had another two days to go.

According to U-Haul’s advertised SafeMove cargo insurance that covers “collision, fire, windstorm, or overturn.” However, the fine print shows that “theft, burglary or robbery of cargo” has no coverage by the Company. U-Haul has no option to buy the theft coverage, except for the stolen truck itself.

“It wasn’t just a vehicle stolen,” Zini said. “It was our entire house, our entire livelihood, our whole lives, our memories from our children’s birth, everything that we had was stolen.”

Days later, the rented U-Haul was found abandoned off 1-20 in Dekalb County. Except for an upright piano and some children’s toys, the truck was empty, according to photos provided by Zini.

“The first thing we did was we had to buy our kids pajamas and just clothes because all we had was an overnight bag,”

Inside one of the boxes, the thieves found a checkbook.

Three stolen checks for $700 to $900 had attempted to be ca Bibb County Sherrif’s Office in Macon, the Zini’s rental truck was not the only one stolen. The Sherrif’s office is investigating five cases. The office provided four incident reports of theft from 2020 to 2021.

Investigators said all of the trucks were abandoned in or around Atlanta, 80 miles to the north.

Authorities believe the cases are related. They suspect an organized crime circle from Atlanta focusing on Macon parking lots and possibly other cities’ parking lots.

“They all appear to have the same description, and when they leave the area, they all end up in the Atlanta area,” investigator Steven Fields from the Bibb County Sheriff’s Office told 11Alive.

Macon investigators did not dust the Zinis’ U-Haul for prints. Investigator Fields told 11Alive that police were not called when U-Haul recovered the vehicle in DeKalb County.

U-Haul told 11Alive, “if U-Haul personnel identifies stolen or abandoned equipment and can recover that equipment, we must contact the customer and the police.”

Investigator Fields told 11Alive that he learned U-Haul had recovered the Zinis’ rental truck directly from Kathleen Zini. U-Haul “had actually contacted her, and

Any prints from the vehicle would be worthless because other people had been through the truck, the investigator said. Another hindrance to the investigation is that the thieves sometimes wear gloves.

Zini confirmed