HOOKSTOWN, PA. — A tiny western Pennsylvania church says its 500-pound brass bell is missing, and police suspect someone has stolen it for scrap — the same thing that happened to the same bell two years ago.
The bell at the Frankfort Presbyterian Church in Hookstown, Beaver County, wasn't rung or kept in the church's steeple. Rather, it sat beneath the church's sign on its front lawn.
Two years ago, police called around to local scrap dealers and arrested three men as they tried to sell the bell to a metal recycler just across the border in East Liverpool, Ohio.
After that, the church welded the bell to a metal stand, which was then attached to a concrete pad buried under the ground.
Despite that, someone managed to take the bell after cutting the welds over the weekend.
