Weekend rampage leaves northeast bar in ruins
A Rundle bar has been forced to close for a few days following an early Sunday morning break-in that left bottles of alcohol shattered, TVs destroyed and liquor stolen.
Dustan Walker, co-owner of Union 26, said the northeast establishment suffered upwards of $40,000 in damages in the breakin.
He said he found out about it Sunday morning when one of his managers called him. Walker then immediately started pulling footage from his security cameras, which shows three people breaking in and damaging the bar.
“They were just throwing bottles around. They were pulling beers out of the coolers and stomping on them,” Walker said.
“They took all the hard alcohol, so that’s a good chunk of money. They smashed, I would say, 50 per cent of the beer in our two beer coolers. They smashed any bottle that was open, like if the bottle had a speed-pour in it, they smashed that.”
The footage also shows the culprits destroying the front windows of the bar, breaking into a room through a wall, damaging all Alberta Gaming and Liquor Commission-owned video lottery terminals and breaking four televisions, according to Walker.
The faces of individuals believed responsible for the rampage were picked up by security cameras and shared with police. Postmedia isn’t publishing the photos as they’re potentially young offenders.
“Their final hurrah was to wreck the VLTs and all that stuff and to let a fire extinguisher off,” he said.
Police said the incident happened around 2 a.m. Sunday. A spokesperson said officers continue to investigate as they try to identify suspects.
Walker, whose ownership team took over the bar about a year ago, said the incident is a blow to business.
“That’s basically the biggest thing. It kind of stifles momentum of growing that business,” he said. “There’s momentum that was happening. Now it’s a hard stop.”
Despite how extensive the damage was, he said he’s hoping the bar will be back open by the middle of the week, or the end of this week at the latest.
“I think you’re going to have to look at it from a perspective of we’ve got to keep going,” Walker said. “It’s hard for our staff who obviously lose hours, lose shifts, lose income on their end because obviously we’re not open and operating. For us, it’s just basically focused on getting open as soon as possible.”