A man in a black Mazda Miata stole from ten Bend businesses last Thursday and Friday night, police said. Since the break-ins, the shops and trucks Central Oregon Daily spoke with are running business as usual and trying to recover from the experience.
Owner of Café Des Chutes, Cari Brown, told us the thief cost her business around $1,000 in damages and stolen property.
“Just enough to hurt, and not quite enough for insurance deductible to cover it,” said Brown.
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He used a crowbar to pry the door open at 2:00 a.m.
“Took the cash box and everything altogether. Snipped the cord, didn’t break it. Took our business cards and then attempted to break into our safe, but thankfully was unable to do that,” Brown added.
Café Des Chutes was not the only business impacted, Samantha Winfrey with Backporch Coffee Roasters spoke with us over the phone and explained what he did to the coffee stand on 15th Street.
“He essentially took our back lights out, really politely set them on the back stairs, he broke the lock to the fuse box, dismantled the fuse box to basically unplug our power,” said Winfrey.
Backporch had to throw away $500 worth of refrigerated products, according to Winfrey.
The Bob food truck says the burglar used a crowbar on it’s window, hopped in the cart and took some cash along with a music speaker.
He then hit even more businesses.
“At first I was like, ‘Why us?’ and then when I realized it was a bunch of people, it sort of depersonalized it,” said Brown.
These are the other businesses that were targeted:
- JJ Coffee Hut in the 20000 block of Cooley Road
- Backporch Coffee Roasters in the 1000 block of SE 15th Street
- Toasty and Bigfoot Barbecue Co. in the Podski Food Cart Lot in the 500 block of NW Arizona Avenue
- IndoDaddy food truck at Spider City Brewing, 1100 block of SE 9th Street
In addition, the Bend Police Department said it took a report of burglaries at El Nava and Nosh Street Food carts and Industrial Joes Coffee, all located at or near Bevel Brewing on SE Armour Road. The suspects took money from the carts and broke doors and windows to enter the locations.
Police told us they believe all of these incidents were committed by the same suspect or suspects.
If the suspect or his car looks familiar, you can call BPD’s nonemergency dispatch at 541-693-6911.
