Store owner pleas for items to be returned after 3 thefts since December
Posted January 18, 2023 3:18 pm.
Last Updated January 18, 2023 6:27 pm.
It’s something you never want to see as a business owner: A person breaking through the front door of your shop at 4 a.m., but for one Winnipeg business owner, that’s a situation they’ve been in three times since the middle of December.
“For me, it was really hard to walk in here that third time and see it again,” said Andrew Parkes, co-owner of the shop and the ‘P’ in EPH Apparel.
Now, he’s asking for the thousands of dollars in stolen property – including a 60-pound safe – to be returned after a string of brazen smash-and-grab robberies from his downtown store.
“I would say somewhere around $10,000 to $12,000 of stuff taken,” he said.
Andrew Parkes, one of the owners of EPH Apparel, speaks inside of the Smith Street shop in Jan. 18, 2023.
In recent weeks, their retail location on Smith Street has had several iPads, watches, laptops, cash and the safe taken in three separate break-ins. All are believed to have been committed by the same person, the first on Dec. 12 the last taking place just this Monday.
“By the time he came back the third time – only a few days after the last time – we took it really personally, because it’s clear we’re being targeted by somebody,” Parkes said. Adding each time captured on camera, the person has been wearing a black North Face parka.
Parkes admits the shop could have had better security in place, but being just metres away from the Winnipeg Police Service’s downtown Headquarters, they thought they’d be safe and they’re now in the process of beefing up security measures.
Damage is still visible at EPH Apparel in downtown Winnipeg after a string of break-and-enters at the shop over the last few weeks.
The downtown business owner has filed police reports on the three instances but is appealing to the alleged thief directly about returning items.
“I’m sympathetic to any number of circumstances that people find themselves in, and an act of contrition like that would certainly go a long way,” he said.
“I’m taking this personally at the moment, but if somebody was to turn it around and decide they had a change of heart based on how they’d acted and everything like that – I mean bygones are bygones and we move on – but again, I won’t be holding my breath on that one.”
Parkes has posted photos of the alleged thief online in hopes of identifying him and on Wednesday, police said investigations into all three matters are ongoing. Parkes says while the string of break-ins has left him and his staff shaken up, this is the first time this has happened since opening the store in 2016.
A public plea made by Andrew Parks on his Twitter page asking for information on the alleged EPH Apparel thief.
He says it hasn’t changed his opinion of the city’s downtown.
“I think our downtown is wonderful, it’s got a lot of great things, and I don’t want people to think this is the standard of what owning a business is like downtown,” he said.
