Caught on Camera: Man Loads Stolen Granite Into Truck at Theodore Business in Daylight

A business owner in Theodore is asking for the public’s help after security cameras caught a man calmly loading stolen stone products into his pickup truck — in broad daylight, from the front yard of the shop. The theft, captured in crisp detail by a surveillance system the owner inherited with the building, has become the latest cautionary tale for small businesses along the Three Notch Road corridor.

Surveillance video shows the man pulling up outside The Stone Experts on Three Notch Road, then carrying granite backsplashes out one by one and stacking them in his truck. By the time he drove off, six pieces were gone. The entire episode unfolded in view of the camera, in the kind of unhurried fashion that has made the footage so striking — and so useful to investigators.

Owner Jason Irby believes the theft happened around 5 or 6 p.m. on a Wednesday, after employees had left for the day. The timing is telling: the thief appeared to know the shop’s rhythm, waiting until the building emptied but acting while there was still plenty of daylight to work by. The pieces themselves were worth only a few hundred dollars, Irby said — and that’s part of what puzzles him.

Custom work with no resale value

The backsplashes had been custom-cut for specific job sites, meaning they’d be of little use to anyone else. Unlike stock slabs or standard tile, each piece was fabricated to the dimensions of a particular customer’s kitchen or bathroom — measurements that match no other counter in the region. Whoever took them cannot sell them to another fabricator or install them in another home without extensive rework that would cost more than the pieces are worth.

He noted the countertops sitting nearby were left untouched, deepening the mystery. If the goal were simply to grab valuable stone, the larger, more expensive slabs were sitting right there. The selection of only the backsplashes suggests either that the thief did not understand what he was taking, or that he had some specific, mistaken idea about what the pieces were worth.

For a fabrication shop, the loss cuts beyond the dollar figure. Custom pieces represent labor already performed — cutting, polishing, and edging time baked into material earmarked for a paying customer. Their theft can mean remaking a piece from scratch, delaying an installation, and absorbing a cost that a shop less than a year old feels acutely.

New business, old problem

Irby said his shop was less than two months old when the theft occurred, and he credited luck as much as planning for catching it on tape: the warehouse he rents simply came with a working camera system already installed. Many new business owners spend their first year outfitting security after the fact; Irby’s thief provided the argument for doing it on day one.

In a message directed at whoever took the stone, Irby kept his cool but didn’t mince words — disappointed more than angry, and convinced that someone who would do this has likely done it before. His reasoning is the same one veteran investigators often cite: daytime thefts from open commercial lots, carried out without disguise or urgency, are typically the work of someone comfortable, someone who has pulled similar stunts elsewhere and gotten away with it.

He hopes anyone who recognizes the man or the truck will contact Mobile County deputies. For businesses along Three Notch Road — the long commercial spine of Theodore, lined for miles with retail shops, contractors’ yards, and small industrial lots — the case is a reminder that visibility and cameras matter as much as locks. Six granite backsplashes are unlikely to make anyone rich, but the footage they left behind may yet cost the man who took them far more than a few hundred dollars.

The Theodore business corridor where the theft occurred is one of Mobile County’s busiest mixed commercial strips. Three Notch Road runs for miles through the community, lined with a patchwork of retail stores, auto shops, contractors’ yards, feed-and-seed outlets, and small manufacturers — exactly the kind of area where standalone buildings sit close to the road and where merchandise is often stored in yards between jobs. The Stone Experts’ front-yard inventory is common practice in the stone and countertop trade, where slabs and finished pieces are staged outdoors for loading and customer viewing.

That openness is part of the business model — and part of the vulnerability. Fabrication shops need room, forklift access, and daylight to move heavy stone, so locking everything behind fences is often impractical. The trade-off is a reliance on cameras, lighting, and the watchfulness of neighboring businesses, which is why the footage from Irby’s inherited camera system matters so much.

The case also highlights the role that security video has come to play in property crimes across Mobile County. A decade ago, a daytime theft from a small shop might have produced only a vague description and a shrug; today, surveillance cameras are inexpensive enough that even a two-month-old business can capture a clear record of a face, a vehicle, and a timeline. Deputies investigating cases like this one routinely turn to the public for identification, and footage like The Stone Experts’ — showing a calm, methodical theft in full daylight — is precisely the kind that generates tips.

What happens next

For investigators, the video offers several identifiable threads: the man’s face and build, his truck, the time of day, and the direction he traveled when he left. Mobile County Sheriff’s Office deputies handling commercial thefts typically canvass nearby businesses for additional camera angles, check whether similar thefts have been reported along the corridor, and circulate still images to the public. A suspect identified through tips could face charges ranging from third-degree theft — which covers property valued in the hundreds of dollars — up to burglary, depending on how prosecutors view the circumstances of entry and taking.

Irby’s decision to speak publicly about the theft serves two purposes. It aids the investigation, and it puts other business owners on notice. In the weeks after a case like this becomes public, neighboring shops typically review their own camera coverage, adjust closing routines, and report suspicious vehicles — the kind of community-level response that prevents the next theft rather than merely documenting it.

For customers of the shop, the practical impact should be minimal. The stolen backsplashes were tied to specific job sites, and fabricators generally remake custom pieces rather than leaving orders short. But the episode underscores how a few hundred dollars of stone — six pieces, one truck, ten unhurried minutes — can rattle a business still in its first year, and how much difference one working camera made in ensuring the story does not end with an empty spot in the yard.

Anyone who recognizes the man or the truck in the footage is asked to contact Mobile County deputies, who can match tips against the timeline Irby believes he has: a Wednesday evening between 5 and 6 p.m., a pickup truck at The Stone Experts on Three Notch Road, and six custom granite backsplashes that fit no one else’s kitchen but someone else’s truck.

Small business thefts like this one carry costs that never appear on an insurance claim. There is the remade inventory and the lost fabrication time, but also the drag on a young owner’s attention — hours spent reviewing footage, filing reports, and posting images instead of cutting stone and chasing jobs. For a shop less than two months old, every such diversion lands hardest, which is why Irby’s measured public response, disappointed rather than furious, has resonated with fellow owners who have been in the same position.

The surveillance video, meanwhile, has done what good footage always does: it takes the case out of the realm of “somebody took some stuff” and into the realm of identifiable facts. There is a truck, a face, a sequence of trips between yard and tailgate, and a departure time. Someone in Theodore or a neighboring community knows that truck. Someone has seen it parked where it should not be, or noticed a few granite backsplashes that never made it onto a wall.

A call to neighbors

Irby hopes anyone who recognizes the man or the truck will contact Mobile County deputies, and the ask extends naturally to the businesses around him: check your cameras for the same truck passing on that Wednesday evening, and note whether anything similar has happened on your lot. Patterns matter in commercial theft, and the corridor’s owners comparing notes is often what turns a single incident into a solvable case.

Until then, the six backsplashes remain pieces that fit exactly one kitchen apiece and no truck bed permanently — custom stone worth a few hundred dollars, taken in daylight, on camera, in front of the whole internet. The man in the video drove off with them; whether he gets to keep them now depends on whether someone who recognizes him decides to make the call.