A tradie has been left unable to work after a man in a hospital gown appeared to wheel his entire $15,000 tool kit out of a secure building site at Auckland City Hospital on a trolley last week.
Matt Kalekale and his crew had been building rooms for hospital staff to sleep in but, when they arrived just before 7am last Tuesday, the tools they had left on site the night before were gone.
"We started looking around, we were like, 'Oh, maybe someone's moved them around'," he said.
"Then maybe after half an hour, we came to the realisation that maybe we'd been robbed."
He told 1News he had left the work tools at the site because he believed the country's largest hospital was one of the safest places he could work.
"To enter the site within the hospital, you've got to have the pin for the hoarding door. There's cameras running around the clock, and then you've got a 24/7 security team who work in-house, patrolling the hospital."
In a statement, Health NZ Te Toka Tumai group director of operations Dr Michael Shepherd said: "We take security at our hospital sites seriously and can confirm this matter has been referred to police".
He said Health NZ was unable to comment further because it was now a police matter.
Security staff later told Kalekale they had footage of a man hanging around the site between 3am and 4am. The man was wearing a hospital gown and one of Kalekale's company hi-vis vests.
At about 6.30am, half an hour after the hospital opened to the public, a camera captured the man pushing a trolley loaded with bundles along the main road. Security said he then headed towards the nearby Auckland Domain.
"We must have just missed him," Kalekale said.
He put the cost of replacing the kit at between $10,000 and $15,000. It included two nail guns worth about $1500 each, lasers, power tools and even his tool belt.
"That's my whole kit, bought over the years, just collected, and just gone in a moment."
He said the theft had cost him his income as well as his tools.
"As a tradie, without my tools, I can't do anything. I can't work. Right now, as we're speaking, I should be on site working. I don't have $15,000 spare to go buy any tools today."
He has since spent his days searching for the man himself.
"I walked up and down Karangahape Rd all day, drove around the city, just trying to find something, or someone who knew something. You get a little bit desperate. You see your income and you just think, 'I've got to do something'."
Police said confirmed a complaint was received on November 3, and inquiries were in the "very early stages" and continuing.
“Police are asking anyone with information to contact police through 105 online or by phone, referencing file number 261103/4845,” a police spokesperson said.
Information can also be provided anonymously via Crime Stoppers on 0800 555 111.
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