LAUREL, Del.- The owners of a small discount grocery store say they received a poor surprise when they tried to turn on a new freezer.
"Wednesday morning we fired it up so we could start stocking it on Thursday," Louis Smith, whose parents own Lou's Discount Groceries, said. "Unfortunately when they fired it up they realized it was cutting in and out and something was wrong."
Smith tells WBOC they called in a service technician, who tested the compressors. The verdict: someone had pumped refrigerant out of one compressor.
"Things like this really hurt because it sets us back," Smith said. "We don't have a lot of money to constantly keep refilling the Freon."
Smith says they are installing security cameras and a fence around the units.
Service technicians who spoke with WBOC say this isn't common, but that more instances of refrigerant being siphoned off are arising in Sussex County.
