Sometime over the weekend, someone broke into the Cayman Islands Humane Society Thrift Shop, a charity operation, at Plaza Venezia and stole cash, thousands of dollars’ worth of electronics and donated merchandise, and did extensive damage as well.
The thrift shop’s manager, Aideen Douglas, said she’s not sure when over the weekend the burglary occurred.
“I left here on Saturday evening,” she said. “I finished around 5pm. It either happened Saturday evening or Sunday and then the young lady that came in first thing on Monday morning at 7:30 saw that the back door had been breached.”
Douglas said it appeared the thief — or thieves — took a fair amount of time to gain entry. The steel back door, which had been bolted at the top and bottom with a locked handle in the middle, was pried open. Once access to the back area of the store was gained, a second door was also breached.
Once inside the second door, whoever was responsible for the burglary ransacked the office, broke into the cash registers, stole the cash float and donated merchandise, including some jewellery that was kept in a safe, and Douglas’s personal laptop computer.
“Normally, I wouldn’t have left my laptop here, but I had a family thing to go to. And, unfortunately, I left my beautiful laptop here,” she said.
Douglas said the break-in and burglary has upset the staff.
“It’s quite shocking,” she said. “For us at work here, it’s really, really sad. I don’t even know how to put it into words.”
The thrift shop will now have to install new security measures, but Douglas said the impact is more than that.
“The problem with this is now we’re going to be suspecting … like with a guy wearing a black hoodie, to see if he’s scoping the joint,” she said.
The Cayman Islands Humane Society published a post on its Instagram account on Monday about the burglary.
“Stealing from a charity and causing thousands of dollars in damage is a new low and impacts the funds we have available to support the animals in our care,” the post stated.
Many of the people who came into the thrift store afterwards expressed outrage, Douglas said.
“The people that I spoke to, they’re very upset that they actually hit the charity shop, especially a charity shop like this that’s been in the community for years,” she said.
The Humane Society’s Instagram post said people who would like to support the charity can shop or drop off items at the thrift store, donate a laptop to replace the stolen one, donate an alarm system, volunteer time at the thrift store, donate directly to the organisation via the website, or share the post to spread awareness.
The police visited the scene on Monday, took fingerprints and have begun an investigation, Douglas said.
To aid in their investigation, the Humane Society is also asking anyone who saw someone trying to break into the back of the Plaza Venezia shop or in the thrift store itself between 6pm Saturday and 7am on Monday to send the information to [email protected].
“I’m hoping to catch whoever did it,” Douglas said. “If nothing else, just to stop them from doing it to another business.”