A brazen thief was arrested on theft charges as he dug out cement along a 800-metre-long road (0.5 miles) in east China.
He sold 500 tons of cement to a nearby factory and earned 5,000 yuan (£563).
The incident came to light as villagers complained that the road 'had gone missing'.
A half-a-mile-long road is missing as shocked villagers in Suqian noticed on January 24
Jiang Yazhou, deputy head of SanKeShu Police in Suqian of Jiangsu Province, told Pear Video as they launched investigations upon receiving a report on January 24.
'Our initial thought was if the villagers were carrying out repairing works, but they told us there wasn't any,' Officer Jiang stated.
As stated by Kan Kan News, the missing section of the road was about 800 metres long (0.5 miles), 3.5 metres wide (11.5ft) and 0.18 metres deep (7 inches).
Local police measure the area and estimate the amount of cement that got stolen away
The area of the missing road has about 500 tons of cement, according to a police statement
The officers waited by the road and noticed a suspect digging up cement at the scene during the night.
The man, known by his surname Zhu, was arrested on site and brought back to the police station.
'The business at home was not very successful. No one was using the path, so I used a digger to lift the cement off the road,' Zhu stated.
He admitted that a total amount of 500 tons of cement were digged out and sold to a nearby stonework at a price of 10 yuan per ton.
Zhu had earned 5,000 yuan (£564) from it. He was arrested on theft charges and has been released on bail before trial.
Zhu told the police that he sold all the cement to a nearby stone material factory for £564
He admitted that he dug out the cement with a digger during the night