AUSTIN — A local charity is burglarized three times in one night. Now, the people who manage the Central Texas Chapter of Big Brothers Big Sisters are hoping surveillance video helps them find the burglar.
http://liarcatchers.com/electronic_surveillance.html
Surveillance video taken from inside the Big Brothers Big Sisters facility at 1400 Tillery Street in East Austin Tuesday morning shows a male burglar squeezing through the window he had broken next to the door. After peering over the receptionist counter, the first thing he puts in his duffel bag is a bowl full of candy. He then makes his way through the building stealing much more than candy.
“We lost several laptops and some A/V equipment like an LCD projector,” said Brent Fields/CEO of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Texas. “The part that really hurts is there were five, brand new bicycles that were promised to kids on our program that were stolen.”
Police say the man came back twice after officers finished their initial investigation.
“The suspect returned at 3:40 a.m. and burglarized the place again,” said Veneza Aguinaga, a Senior Police Officer with APD. “Then officers responded to that. When officers left again at 4:20 a.m., the suspect returned.”
Three weeks ago, Big Brothers Big Sisters managers say their air conditioning units were the targets of multiple burglaries.
“We had somebody stealing some copper piping from our outside air conditioning unit, and they came back and did it again,” said Fields.
Fields estimates all of the repairs and replacements will cost thousands of dollars. Geneva, whose last name has been withheld, has been a little sister in the program for more than five years, knows it’s the kids who will feel the loss.
“It makes me mad because this organization is so big and so many kids look forward to it,” she said. “It just makes me feel so sad that somebody out there would go and take stuff that helps kids. It just hurts.”
If you’d like to help Big Brothers Big Sisters, go to their website.
