Thieves break shop roof, smash wall in Linwell heist
Bandits cause $50,000 damage accessing variety story via Homestead Donuts
Looking at his security camera footage, Derek Folkowkski thought his doughnut shop had become part of a Hollywood heist movie.
“I cannot believe it,” said the owner of Homestead Donuts Deli & Cafe on Grantham Avenue.
“It looks like the ‘Italian Job,’” he added in reference to the movie remake starring Mark Wahlberg.
The video footage recorded during the pre-dawn hours Tuesday shows a pair of robbers who cut a hole in the bakery’s ceiling to get inside and use a sledgehammer to smash through a concrete wall into the variety store next door.
Over the course of two hours one of the robbers, a tall, thin man in a tracksuit, created a hole in the wall large enough for him to crawl through. Once inside Linwell Variety, he passed through enough stolen goods to his female partner to fill at least three large garbage bags.
The pair fled when a Homestead delivery driver arrived.
“They destroyed everything,” said Folkowkski, who owns three Homestead Donuts shops in St. Catharines. “They did at least $50,000 in damage.”
Homestead Donuts staff closed the Grantham Avenue store Wednesday for repairs and cleanup. But Folkowkski wants everyone to see the footage of the heist.
“Maybe it will help identify who these people are,” said Folkowkski, who shared some of the security camera footage with The Standard.
The break-in started at about 2 a.m. Tuesday. Footage of a camera in the bakery kitchen shows pieces of the ceiling start to fall on the floor. A chain then falls into frame, followed by a pair of feet.
The male bandit, whose face is hidden by a hood and bandana, lands on a shelf and scans the room with a flashlight before dropping to the floor and getting to work.
After opening the back door for his partner, a woman with long braids and a baseball cap, he clears off a counter in the bakery, throwing the machinery and
boxes on the floor.
He then climbs on the counter and armed with a sledgehammer with an axe blade on one end, the bandit begins to bash at the 12-inch-thick concrete wall.
After about 10 minutes he breaks through the wall and gets off the counter. The bandit pulls the hood off his head and the bandana from his face, revealing his dishevelled dark hair, and paces around the store, even stealing a drink from one of the bakery’s refrigerators.
Eventually, he gets up on another counter a few metres from the hole he created.
“I think he wanted to get into the cigarette cage in the variety store,” said Folkowkski. “But the first hole was not in the right place, so he had to back up and try again.”
The intruder’s second attempt created a hole large enough for him to crawl through and pass stolen goods to his partner.
At about 4 a.m, the female bandit can be seen alerting her partner to something. He crawls back through the hole and the pair run away with several filled bags.
“My delivery guy showed up and scared them off,” said Folkowkski. “He didn’t see them.”
Folkowkski said he contacted Niagara Regional Police Tuesday morning and gave them copies of the security camera videos.
A police spokesperson could not be immediately reached Wednesday afternoon.