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German police: Thieves stole huge gold coin with wheelbarrow

German police: Thieves stole huge gold coin with wheelbarrow | iNFOnews.ca
Visitors stand in the room where a 100 kilogram-heavy gold coin was displayed in the Bode Museum, in Berlin, Germany, Tuesday March 28, 2017. Thieves broke into the German capital's Bode Museum before dawn Monday and made off with a massive 100-kilogram (221-pound) gold coin worth millions of dollars, police said. Police spokesman Stefen Petersen said thieves apparently entered through a window about 3:30 a.m. Monday, broke into a cabinet where the "Big Maple Leaf" coin was kept, and escaped with it before police arrived. (Silas Stein/dpa via AP)

Berlin police say suspects used a wheelbarrow to make off with a 100-kilogram (221-pound) gold coin worth millions.

Police said Tuesday at least two burglars broke into the Bode Museum early Monday morning using a ladder to climb up to a window from elevated railway tracks running alongside the building.

The thieves grabbed the “Big Maple Leaf” coin, on loan to the museum’s coin collection, loaded it onto the wheelbarrow, then carted it out of the building and along the tracks across the Spree river before descending into a park on a rope and fleeing in a getaway car.

Police say the three-centimetre (1.2-inch) thick coin, with a diameter of 53 centimetres (20.9 inches) and worth some $4.5 million for the gold alone, was likely damaged in the theft.

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Abbey Westbury

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