Maine State Police are investigating the theft of power tools from a construction site in Rome owned by the Travis Mills Foundation that will eventually serve as a retreat for combat-injured veterans and their families, the third such instance of theft in recent years linked to the foundation.

The tools belong to Above and Beyond LLC, a Lewiston company that is overseeing the renovation project, said Lynn Harvey, executive director of the foundation, in a news release. Workers noticed that the tools were missing when they entered the work site Monday morning and state police responded there to investigate.

Veteran Travis Mills, founder of the Travis Mills Foundation, reported the theft of tools from a construction site in Rome that will become a retreat for combat-injured veterans and their families. It's the third time a theft has occurred at a Mills Foundation project. Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal

The exact value of the loss was not immediately known.

The Mills foundation is currently renovating the former summer home of Elizabeth Arden, originally built in 1929 and which the group purchased in February 2015 with the goal of converting it into a veteran’s retreat that the foundation will operate.

The nonprofit Mills foundation was founded by retired Staff Sgt. Travis Mills in 2013 after he lost both his arms and legs to an improvised explosive device blast a year earlier in Afghanistan. The group’s mission is to help wounded veterans and their families.

“I’m disgusted at the thought someone would enter the property of the Foundation and steal from the very people who are helping to make sure we are on schedule to begin hosting veteran families from across the country next summer,” said Mills, who is also the foundation’s president, in the news release. “To steal from people, especially when they are doing good things for our veterans, is unconscionable.”

Mills and his organization have been the subject of two other thefts in recent years.

In April 2014, more than $10,000 worth of tools were stolen from the site where a state-of-the-art home was being built for Mills in Manchester. An Augusta woman was later convicted of that theft.

In May 2015, burglars broke into the Augusta Elks Lodge and stole more than $10,000 that were earmarked for a Mills foundation fundraiser. Three men from southern Maine were accused of that crime in December that year.

The organization has asked people with information about the missing goods to email Sgt. Alden Bustard at alden.e.bustard@maine.gov.

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