Peekskill Citgo Burglarized During Power Outage

Covered by a shield of darkness, a consequence of Oct. 29’s snowstorm, someone broke the front window of a Citgo convenience store on one of Peekskill’s main streets, broke the cash register and stole cash, a laptop and cigarettes.

“He must have spent at least a half hour in there to break the register,” the station’s manager said.

The Washington Street gas station has been without power since 8 p.m. Saturday night and was still waiting for ConEdison to restore power around 3 p.m. Tuesday afternoon. The break-in was discovered Monday morning, when an employee saw that the window of the door and cash register had been smashed in.

The station was also forced to give away milk and eggs Monday, lost all its refrigerated food, and has now lost more than three days of business.

“I am worried, but what am I going to do,” said the manager, a Croton-on-Hudson resident who refused to provide his name, but said that the store has insurance to cover this kind of incident.

Despite the fact his store was burglarized, pine trees were weighing down heavily on wires and an entire electric pole was pulled down from the side of his building, the manager was smiling and making light of the situation.

“The ice cream has already turned to milk shakes,” he said with a laugh.

He explained that the Con Edison employee who was sitting in his car outside of the gas pumps Tuesday afternoon had been there since Monday night.

“If he was here Sunday this (the burglary) wouldn’t have happened.”

Peekskill Police Lieutenant said that patrol officers were instructed to be on the look out for break-ins given that the power was out, alarm systems were down and it was dark.

But, he said, other than Citgo, they did not see a spike in break-ins and burglaries in the aftermath of the storm.

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