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Classic boat stolen from resident’s yard

By Staff

A 23-foot boat and a boat trailer were stolen from a Cape Coral home, according to a police report.
Police responded to a home at 5253 Stratford Court at about 7:56 p.m. Wednesday. Hans Grute, the resident, said he had just returned home from Sweden and found his boat and the trailer stored at the residence were missing.
Grute reported that the boat is a white and blue, 1974 23-foot Chris Craft Lancer. The trailer is 24 feet to 30 feet long and the boat had a Chevy 350 engine. Everything is valued at about $12,000.
“I was very, very upset,” Grute said Friday about finding his boat missing.
This is the first time anything like this has happened to his family.
“I couldn’t believe it because I’ve been here now for 17 years in Cape Coral and we have, up to now, found that Cape Coral was a very peaceful place and no robbery,” Grute said. “It was great in all ways.”
He was in the process of refurbishing the boat, which he bought in the spring.
“It’s an old one. It’s a classic one,” Grute said. “This Lancer ’74 is very, very rare and they are very, very special, so I was going to restore it.”
The engine had been repaired and the boat recently had been painted.
“It was just under restoration,” he said.
According to the report, Grute had spoken to several of his neighbors. The neighbors said they saw it was missing in the middle of September, and that they saw the boat get taken but could only recall that a truck had taken it.
The neighbors did not think to call police because Grute was always having people work on the boat. Grute confirmed that he had hired someone to work on his boat during the early summer months, and that a plumbing company had been working on his home as well, the report states.
Grute told police that he does wish to press charges.
Anyone with information can contact the Cape Coral Police Department at 574-3223 or Southwest Florida Crime Stoppers at (800) 780-TIPS (8477).