Burglaries Hit 3 Village Businesses; a 4th Attempted

Three Tosa Village businesses were burglarized the night of May 15, and an attempt was made to break into another.

The first report was called in from Blue Lapin, 7600 Harwood Ave., at about 9:45 a.m., and in short order it was discovered that Urban Laundry and Oro di Oliva, in the same building and sharing a back hallway, had also been entered.

About an hour later, officers were called to Niemann's Candies, 7475 Harwood, where it had been discovered that someone had tried to pry open the back door, without success.

At Blue Lapin, an employee had unlocked the back door to the building and then found the hallway door into the shop closed but clearly having been jimmied. She immediately left the way she came, without touching the forced door, re-entered with a key through the front and called police.

Before officers arrived, she noticed cash was missing from a bag kept in a side office.

At Urban Laundry, it was unclear how the burglar or burglars got in. Neither the front or back doors appeared to have been damaged, but cash was missing there, too, from the register.

At Oro di Oliva, an employee came in through the front door and noticed nothing amiss before one of the other business owners informed of the burglaries. She then checked the cash register and found all the money missing. She also noticed that a surveillance camera normally pointed at the front door was now pointed up at the ceiling.

The key to the cash register had been taken from its usual hiding place and was in the drawer when the theft was discovered.

There was no sign of forced entry there, either, and the several owners of the businesses and the building told officers that there were several keys to the stores and the back building door hidden in various places, and that a number of employees, present and past, knew of them.

They and officers speculated that someone who knew about the hiding places had been able to simply unlock the building and the doors of Oro and Urban Laundry but was unaware of a key to Blue Lapin and so broke in that door.

At Niemann's, deep pry marks were found in two places on the back door.