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NATCHEZ — Sometime Friday night, a thief stole approximately $2,000 worth of tools from Natchez-Adams County Habitat for Humanity.

The tools were taken from a locked trailer located behind the 25th Habitat House on Old Washington Road.

“When I got to the trailer on Saturday morning, I could tell the lock had been cut off and a lot of our tools were missing from inside,” said long-time Habitat volunteer and current secretary, Duncan McFarlane.

“Of course, we filed a police report. They came by and took down all of the details,” McFarlane said. “Luckily, the house was locked up and they didn’t break into it because we had more tools stored inside the house. We put another lock on the trailer, but with bolt cutters…those are easy to cut off.”

Unfortunately, this is not McFarlane’s first time to deal with the theft of Habitat property.

“It’s happened two or three times over the last 20 years. They will break into the house we are building or into our warehouse. We have insurance, but I don’t think what was stolen will cover the deductible. I will call and see to make sure.”

Anyone wanting to help can make a financial donation to Natchez-Adams County Habitat for Humanity, P.O. Box 100, Natchez, MS, 39121.

“We’ve got to replace the tools. We will go out next week and start pricing the tools to build back up our inventory. We can’t store them in that trailer any longer. We will work on finding a save place to store them in the next few days,” McFarlane said.

The Habitat began construction on its 25th house about six months ago, he said.

“We are about halfway through. We have two other warehouses over on MLK, but they are right next to a couple of houses, so nobody has bothered those. It has been so nice to have our trailer right there on the jobsite,” McFarlane said. “We will probably talk about putting some cameras up.”