Just before 4 a.m. on Wednesday, two men in black crept into a Seymour gas station, crawling to avoid setting off the motion detector alarm. After clearing out racks of cigarettes, the burglars used a screwdriver to bust into a safe and grab the previous day’s take. They made off with about $15,000 in cash and cigarettes.
Meanwhile, in Shelton, Pramod Kandel’s convenience store on Howe Avenue has been hit by burglars twice in two and a half weeks. The thieves also grabbed cigarettes and cash.
The three break-ins are part of a recent rash of commercial burglaries in the two towns.
Shelton’s Detective Ben Trabka said police are investigating 10 burglaries along the Rt. 110 corridor in the past couple of weeks.
The thieves have been hitting their targets between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m. and focus on cash registers, safes, and cigarettes, Trabka said.
Trabka said it looks like two or three groups are behind the burglaries. Some are more professional and others seem to be done by people — drug addicts, Trabka speculated — smashing in any way they can, he said.
Trabka said burglars re-sell their stolen cigarettes to mom-and-pop convenience stores in nearby cities.
Lt. Paul Satkowski of the Seymour police department confirmed that cops are looking into recent burglaries in that town as well.
Seymour Sunoco
One of those is the Wednesday morning break-in at a Sunoco service station on Rt. 67.
On Thursday, owner Shu Ton, explained what happened:
At about 3:55 a.m., according to the store’s surveillance tapes, two burglars dressed all in black broke a window in one of the service bay’s garage doors. They climbed in, crawled into the attached convenience store, and started loading cigarettes from the behind the counter into two bags.
After clearing out the inventory, the two men left the way they came in.
Then, five minutes later, they were back. This time, they hit the cash register and used a screw driver to break into a safe under the counter.
That five-minute break is a tell-tale sign that the burglars were pros, Ton said. It’s also the same method used at a recent Shelton break-in, Ton said cops told him.
Detective Trabka confirmed that the same technique was used at Bertucci’s in Shelton on Tuesday night.
Sometimes delays caused by alarm companies can give burglars extra time, Trabka said.
“Sometimes some of their alarm procedures make it advantageous for the bad guys,” Trabka.
‘We Don’t Want It to Happen Again’
Reviewing his video footage of the break-in, Ton pointed out how calm and methodical the pair of burglars were. He said he thinks they must have cased the place beforehand, to figure out where they needed to go to avoid triggering the motion sensors that trigger the burglar alarm.
One of those sensors had been blocked by an air-conditioning unit installed this summer, Ton said. After the break-in, he immediately had it moved, and installed extra sensors around his business. Ton said he’s also bought a stronger safe.
“We don’t want it to happen again,” he said.
Ton said he lost a total of about $15,000 in cash and cigarettes.
“When these racks are full, that’s $8,000 to $10,000,” he said, pointing to the cigarettes behind the counter.
The store also kept some 120 cartons below the packs. Each carton is worth about $80. The previous day’s cash intake was in the safe below the counter, Ton said.
Ton said he’s not sure his insurance will cover his loss.
“All I can do is hope they can cover it.” Either way, he said, his premiums will increase. “We still end up paying for it.”
Night Vision
In Shelton, Pramod Kandel is shelling out cash to prevent another burglary. His convenience store, Mill Variety and Video, was burglarized twice since October. He recently sunk $1,800 into a top-notch night-vision surveillance camera system.
“I have no other choice,” he said on Thursday, behind the counter in Mill Variety and Video. “I either close the business or put in a new system.”
Kandel said he was burglarized early in the morning on Oct. 20 and then again on Nov. 8. The first time, the thieves came in the front door, grabbed about 320 cigarette cartons and cleaned out the cash register.
After Kandel put bars on the door, the thieves smashed the front window. They used a BB gun to do it, Kandel said. He pulled up an image on his digital camera of a little BB he found on the floor of his store.
The thieves again grabbed all the cigarettes. They also easily found the cash that Kandel had hidden in a cigar box under the counter. “They figured it out like a family member,” he said.
Kandel, who lives with his wife across the street from the store, said he was awakened by his store’s burglar alarm on Nov. 8. His bedroom faces the street and he watched as three men ran out and drove off in an old gray car with no plates. “I watched them taking everything,” he said.
Kandel said he didn’t run out to confront them because he saw one of them had a gun.
Now, he said, he and his wife Shrijana can’t sleep at night for fear of being burglarized again.
“It is scary,” said Shrijana. She said she doesn’t like working in the store alone after 4 p.m. anymore.
In between the two burglaries, a neighbor spotted three guys who looked like they were getting ready to break-in. But when they saw her watching, they moved on, said the woman, who came in for a pack of smokes and some Arizona iced tea, on Thursday.
“Sooner or later, they’re going to come back,” Kandel said.
