Video shows a man and woman stealing about $50,000 in high-end-guitars from an Irvine storage unit, police said in a statement Thursday announcing their arrests.
The surveillance video captures Derek Allen Dodds, 34, and Brittney Christine Patterson, 27, taking the guitars out of the unit located at Extra Space Storage, located along Laguna Canyon Road in Irvine, according to police.
The theft was reported on Oct. 3 and the pair was arrested Tuesday after being found through an undercover sting by police.
In the video, a man and woman can be seen taking turns wheeling away guitar cases — placed on a dolly loaded with up to five cases at a time— into a silver Lexus sedan. Police have also released photos of two reportedly stolen guitars.
Dodds and Patterson were arrested while allegedly attempting to sell one of the guitars to police detectives posing as buyers they met online, police said.
On Tuesday, they allegedly scheduled a meeting to sell the guitar at the Ontario Mills Mall — around miles 40 north of the storage unit police have accused them of breaking into.
When police arrived to the scheduled sale, they found three stolen guitars inside the suspects’ vehicle, officials said.
Dodds and Patterson were arrested at 4:30 p.m. that day, police said.
Investigators later learned that 11 of the other guitars were actually seized by authorities in an “unrelated operation,” police said in a news release.
So far, there are still three guitars missing of the 21 reported as stolen, police said.
One of the guitars appears to bear the work of artist Patrick Nagel, perhaps most famous for a piece that reached the cover of Duran Duran’s 1981 album “Rio.”
The pair is also suspected of being behind the theft of a safe containing collectible items from another Extra Space Storage facility in Irvine, located along 20 Post.
Police said they’re also linked to another break-in at the same storage facility where the guitars were stolen, although nothing was taken in that incident.
No other details have been released by police. Anyone with information can contact Detective Edward Martinez at 949-724-7177 or edmartinez@cityofirvine.org.
