Man says there was no burglary of storage units, he was hired to clear out the contents

DOUGLASVILLE, Ga. — There’s an exclusive development in a story Channel 2 Action News has been following for days.

After some Douglasville Self Storage facility tenants discovered their belongings either dumped or missing, we are now hearing from a contractor who said he was paid to remove the property from the units.

“I just want the people in Douglasville to know a burglary never took place,” the contractor told Channel 2′s Audrey Washington on Wednesday.

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He asked his name to not be used for this report.

“I have proof here, the contract, I have signatures,” he added.

The manager of the facility, Kathryn D. East with Sopapta Consulting, Management & Auditing, told Channel 2′s Audrey Washington last week that the facility was burglarized during a renovation project.

But Douglasville Police said they are not investigating a burglary at the facility.

“I understand what the city of Douglasville has stated. It’s incorrect,” East said.

However, the contractor said he and his crew were instructed to clear out the units and take whatever they wanted.

“What did you guys take out of the storage units?” asked Washington.

“Vacuum cleaners, a few TVs, speakers, just things like that that were valuables,” the contractor answered.

The contractor then provided a copy of the contract he said he had with the construction company that was hired by the owners of the storage unit facility.

“We’ll dump all materials in units for cleanouts,” the man read from the contract.

“I’m devastated because I’m out of thousands of dollars,” storage unit tenant Gary J. Brown said.

Brown said he was shocked to find his belongings stripped from his unit.

He shared an email he said he received from the management company on Wednesday.

It read:

“We wanted to bring an incident that occurred at the facility on September 14, 2023 to your attention. As you may have noticed, we have started our improvement project at the facility over the last few weeks. This project includes cleaning up the perimeter of the facility, removing debris, removing the restrictive awning from one of the drive isles, as well as fixing doors, light fixtures and painting the buildings and doors. The next phase of improvements will include an expansion of drive-up storage and converting the warehouse into climate control storage.

Unfortunately, a few employees from one of the subcontractors that was hired by the construction manager engaged for this project cut off 13 locks from customer units during normal regular business hours and then returned overnight to take 9 of our customers belongings. Our company’s Management at no time directed these subcontractors to cut locks, and this was not a part of the scope of work the construction manager, or its subcontractor, was engaged to perform.

This incident was captured on video surveillance and representatives from our team immediately notified the police and took the appropriate actions to mitigate the situation. This included causing the construction manager to suspend the subcontractor’s work at the facility, filing a police report, notifying the unfortunate customers that were affected, and helping them with their insurance claims.

After a thorough walkthrough of the facility, to our knowledge, no other customers units were affected. Our team is doing everything in our power to assist these customers. Our top priority is to keep our customers safe, and their belongings secure.

As you can imagine, we are devastated and disappointed that this incident occurred and we sincerely apologize to all of our customers. We have taken immediate steps to ensure that a similar incident does not happen again. The facility improvement project will continue, and we apologize for any inconvenience it may cause. We greatly appreciate your business.”

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The contractor said the statement was untrue.

“We were going in there to do the job that we were supposed to be doing,” he said. “At the end of the day, those people are really trying to cover up a story.”

Washington reached out to the management company and the construction company for comment about the contract, but they did not return her calls or emails.

Some of the tenants said they were instructed to file insurance claims to cover their property loss.

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