Burglaries not small crimes for local shops
Thefts from stores like Rose & Sal like ‘stealing from the family.’
Yellow Springs police arrested a man suspected of burglarizing a local business, and the incident has the owner thankful for technologythat helped catch him and for community conversations that have happened since then.
Susan Bell, owner of Rose and Sal Vintage Antique Shop on Dayton St., caught the burglar on camera Dec. 23 at 5:03 a.m. It was the flash of the red recording light that Bell said probably made the man look directly into the camera.
“First time it’s happened to me,” Bell said. “Come to find out, because I was vocal about telling people that it happened, other people came forward and said that it’s happened to other retailers in town. But the peo
ple weren’t talking to each other about it.”
Police Chief Brian Carlson said he is pleased Bell had the security cameras in place.
“It’s an open investigation,” Carlson said. “We do have a suspect who was arrested in connection with that, but there’s no other information that we can give out at this time. I do think that this same suspect may have committed other breaking and enterings, but we’re still in the investigation phase.”
On Nov. 25, the owner of Tibet Bazaar in Yellow Springs, Drenko Pureval, said his shop was broken into. It was broken into again a couple days later.
The Tuesday before Bell’s shop was robbed, Jared Whittaker, manager of SuperFly Comics and Games, said he found the store’s lock was tampered with, but no break-in appeared to have taken place.
“My partner and I lost both of our fathers this year,” Bell said. “We’ve also had unexpected medical things with one of our sons. It just adds to it. We’re an independent business, we haven’t even made it to our second year yet. Luckily, the loss wasn’t more, but it’s still huge. It takes us days sometimes to make up for those sales, for the cash that was taken.”
As soon as Bell posted about the incident on the Yellow Springs Open Discussion Facebook page, that’s when she said neighboring retailers began coming forward to share other breakins they have heard about.
“Maybe sometimes people feel like you shouldn’t talk about bad stuff, but you should,” Bell said. “Because clearly he’s been able to do multiple things in town without people talking about it. ... Hopefully at this point not only has he been stopped, but now that we’re all talking about it, hopefully everybody can look out for each other a little more.”
Bell described how much impact one incident can have — financially and emotionally — especially for a family-run business like Rose and Sal.
“It makes you look at everything a little bit differently . ... How many times was he in the store before?” Bell said.
Rose and Sal’s three employees include Bell, her partner and their oldest son.
“Having somebody’s face on video that you see in your store when you’re not there. And then you begin to think, is it that guy? Is it that guy? It is very unnerving,” she said.
“It’s not always what you want to have people talking about your store in a situation like this ... But it is great that people start talking about the small businesses in Yellow Springs. People don’t think about that but you steal something from Target and it might not have the same impact on the company as it does on somebody where, it’s just us. Already such a huge portion of your sales go to running the businesses . ... You’re really stealing from the family.”