Efforts to kill invasive fish working Valley Electric board president resigns Pair indicted in theft of luxe watches

Two accused of breaking into storage unit holding 21 timepieces

One day, Dustin Lewis and Margaux Ornelas were living in a tent on the desert floor.

Overnight, authorities say, they had a fortune: nearly $2.2 million worth of luxury watches.

On Friday, about six months later, Lewis, 36, and Ornelas, 42, were indicted on four counts of burglary, two counts of conspiracy and one count of grand larceny.

The charges stemmed from a night in early December, when authorities said the couple hopped the wall of a Storageone on West Flamingo Road and happened upon a unit where Marc Falcone, a former high-ranking Station Casinos executive, had stored at least 21 watches, ranging in value from $12,300 to $300,000, lined neatly on metal shelving.

A few of the watches have been recovered, but investigators are still searching for the rest, including one of the most expensive, a $300,000 Greubel Forsey.

District Judge Michelle Leavitt on Friday issued a $500,000 arrest warrant for

a crane on the roof of a building being constructed as part of the new Google Seattle campus. The mast toppled, killing two bystanders and two ironworkers.

Plans to erect or dismantle cranes in Nevada must be submitted to OSHA for review at least 15 business days before the equipment goes up or comes down. “Clear zones” surrounding cranes are kept free of workers and pedestrians. Any lift deemed highly hazardous shuts down when winds exceed 35 miles per hour, and some projects shut down their cranes at much lower wind speeds.

“Safety is paramount. You try to anticipate all the risks,” said Willie Acosta, a crane engineer for Dielco Crane Service Inc. “The taller the piece of equipment, the bigger the area of destruction might be.”

The state’s rules, which go above and beyond federal regulations, were overhauled after a tower crane in Laughlin fell into the parking lot of the Riverside hotel-casino and killed three people in 1994.

In 2006, high winds brought down four tower cranes at the Hoover Dam bypass bridge project. No one was injured, but the project was significantly delayed.

Nevada lawmakers put the certification rule on the books in 2005. Lankford said it’s important to keep crane operators trained, even with advancements in technology making it easier to use the machines.

“I think the individual needs to understand the dynamic of lifting a load like that,” he said.

Contact Michael Scott Davidson at sdavidson@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3861. Follow @davidsonlvrj on Twitter.