Breaking News



  BREAKING NEWS

  A Sign of the Times

  G. J. Irrera

  Copyright G. J. Irrera 2005

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  BREAKING NEWS

  This case happened two weeks before I graduated from high school; Mom and I were out shopping for new bathing suits for our trip to the beach later that summer.

  Mom got a call from the insurance company where she works; I did tell you that my Mom is an insurance investigator, didn’t I? They told her that one of their clients had just reported a robbery and that they wanted her to go to the store and check it out.

  The robbery took place at an electronics store on Frankford Avenue in Northeast Philadelphia. We were only a few blocks away when Mom got the call so we just walked.

  Just in case you are not familiar with Frankford Avenue almost the entire street is businesses with a few apartments here and there. The buildings are all connected so that each block looks like a little strip mall.

  A lot of the older stores are two or three stories high and the people who own the store either live upstairs or rent out the apartments.

  There could be a dozen stores on one block or only two or three, it just depended on the size of each store.

  On this particular block there were only three stores and they were all single story buildings. There was the electronics store on one end, a jeweler store in the middle and a woman’s clothing store on the other end.

  I made a note to remind Mom to stop there on the way home; I noticed a really cute top in the window as we walked by.

  The electronic store was robbed overnight with a loss of over $90,000 in merchandise plus some minor damage to the building.

  We got to the store at about 10:30 AM and found that the police were wrapping up their initial interrogation of the owner and the two employees.

  Mom introduced herself to one of the police officers and told him that she would just look around the outside of the building. He said that a detective and the finger print guys would be along shortly and asked her not to touch anything until they arrived.

  We went back out the front door and around the side of the building.

  The back of the store opens on an alleyway that is just wide enough for the trash collection trucks to drive through without hitting the walls of the buildings.

  On the other side of the alley were the backs of some other buildings.

  We walked down the alley; there was a police car parked a few feet from the backdoor of the electronics shop.

  We looked over the area behind the store; the backdoor was made of steel with three small windows at the top. It was a lot bigger than a normal house front door; at least four feet wide and about eight feet tall.

  Just above the door was a beat up old light fixture that was still turned on. All three windows were broken and the glass was on the ground and on one of the trashcans that was sitting upside down just to one side of the door.

  Mom tried to look into the store through the little windows in the door with no luck. She’s about five foot, five or so but even standing on tiptoes, she couldn’t see into the back of the store.

  The two trash cans near the door were really beat up; the tops of the cans were crushed on one side from years of being banged against the back of the trash truck.

  If you tried to use them to stand on you would be taking the chance of breaking your neck.

  Mom’s natural curiosity got the better of her and she walk down the alley just to see what the backdoors of the other stores looked like.

  The jewelry story had a small window near the backdoor with heavy bars that would prevent anyone from getting in through the window.

  Mom said that with a good fingernail file even an armature crook could open the backdoor of the jewelry store.

  The clothing store had a door much like the on the electronic store.

  We walked back to the electronic store; Mom reached for the doorknob but stopped herself the police officer said that the finger print guys would be there soon and she didn’t want to mess up any fingerprints that might be on the doorknob.

  Of course, the crooks would have to be real dopes if they didn’t wear gloves, so I doubt if there would be prints on the doorknob.

  We were about to walk around to the front of the store when the door opened; it was one of the police officers.

  “This stupid door keeps blowing shut and it locks once it closes,” He said as he propped the door open again, “I had to walk around to the front of the store twice”.

  He said that he had the door propped open so he could get to his car but the wind must have blown it shut again.

  I’m not sure why he thought he needed to explain all of that to Mom and I; Mom just smiled and we walked into the back of the store.

  We walked through what was mostly a storage area; there were boxes stacked almost to the ceiling, the place was full of flat screen TV’s, DVD players, recorders and lot of other very expensive stuff.

  Mom stopped near the desk; she pulled the chair out and found a small box. The chair had been set at its lowest level so the chain with the box on the seat could fit under the desk.

  The box on a chair was still sealed but the clear plastic pouch on the side of the box was open; Mom looked at the invoice that was in the pouch.

  This was box one of two boxes of the shipment and the boxes contained a total of twenty of those new super duper cell phones that do everything but make your breakfast.

  The two boxes of phones were worth almost seven thousand dollars and were listed on the initial insurance report as stolen. “Looks like the thieves forgot one of the boxes of phones,” Mom said.

  I could tell by the tone of Mom’s voice that she was mad; one thing she hates is being lied to. Even if is an oversight you must now prove to her that everything else you tell her isn’t a lie.

  Mom looked at the windows again and at the back of the door to see where the lock was.

  The lock and doorknob were a little higher than on a normal door, which put it a good three and a half feet or more from the windows.

  She also noticed that there were two wires sticking out of the wall where the back door alarm sensor used to be, which meant there was no alarm on the back door, even if the system was working properly.

  There was one of those motion sensors that sound like a door bell whenever someone walks in front of them, but it wasn’t working either. “Now that is a real deterrent,” Mom said with just a touch of sarcasm in her voice.

  Ron walked into the back room, “Do you know that the light over the back door is still on,” Mom said.

  “Oh yeah,” Ron said, the switch broke a couple of weeks ago and I hard wired it so it stays on all the time”.

  “Well aren’t you the clever little devil,” Mom said.

  Ron smiled, I’m sure he thought Mom’s comment was a compliment, which it wasn’t.

  When we got back into the store the other sales person, a guy named Garry was standing near the doorway, “Can you show me where the computers that were stolen where located in the store,” Mom asked.

  “Well they ain’t there anymore,” Garry said, “But I’ll show you where they used to be”.

  Garry obviously thought that was very funny. But Mom didn’t, “You seem to find this
very amusing,” she said, “This theft could go over one hundred thousand dollars, that’s grand theft which means someone is going to go to jail for a very long time.”

  The smile on Garry’s face disappeared very quickly. Did you ever meet someone and from the very second you were introduced you just knew that you didn’t like that person?

  That was Garry, Mom said that she wasn’t sure what it was about him that she didn’t like but she just knew that she wouldn’t be adding him to our Christmas card list this year.

  Garry directed us to a display with some shelves and a big sign that read “We Got’em”, “Well someone certainly got’em”, Mom told me”.

  The display shelves that Garry directed us to were facing the front window of the store giving potential customers as well as potential crooks a clear view of some very expensive merchandise. The shelves were only a few feet from the front door so someone could easily step into the store, grab something from one of the shelves and be out the door before anyone could do anything about it.

  Garry, told us that they were supposed to have a big sale today on the computers and phones that were stolen.

  There was a stack of advertisement flyers at the end of the display that had just about everything in the store listed.

  Garry pointed out the two computers and cell phones that had been stolen on the flyer.

  Garry pointed at a sign on the