GREENWOOD, Ind (Sept. 16, 2015) – One week after burglars stole virtually everything in his jewelry store, Michael Dyson stood in the middle of his business, surrounded by empty display cases.
“It makes me feel angry at this point,” Dyson said. “I mean I’m really angry.”
Last Wednesday, Dyson had closed his store for the night when at least four burglars started cutting the steel roof on top of the building which houses Alternative Creations Jewelry Store. The store is part of the shopping strip, attached to Kroger on State Road 135, just south of Fairview Road in Greenwood.
After cutting a large hole in the roof, surveillance video shows two individuals climbing down into a back room of the store.
“Kind of like Batman,” said Greenwood Police Department Spokesperson Kortney Burrello. “These guys knew what they were doing.”
Once inside, the suspects cut a wire connected to the central panel of a Circle City Alarm security system. Then, they cut an alarm line on a back door, removed the security bar on the door and left.
“They waited a couple hours,” Burrello said. “Waited for the police to show up, seeing if they got caught by the alarm or not. It did not trigger the alarm.”
With no alarm and no police response, four suspects came back into the store and took virtually everything in the store’s inventory. Some of that includes custom, fabricated jewelry for sale. Some of it includes jewelry left by customers for repairs.
“That’s what hurts me most,” Dyson said. “Having to tell my customers that their jewelry, which they left here with me, is gone.”
Dyson estimates the total loss somewhere between $200,000 and $300,000, but he’s still waiting for answers from his insurance company.
He’s also waiting for an explanation from the alarm company. He says he was assured that if the wireless signal sent out by the system was disrupted, it would trigger an alarm, but it didn’t.
While the suspects were in the store, they cut wires to the security cameras inside. They were captured on video before they cut the lines, and they apparently forgot to take the DVR that records and stones that video. Images from the video show four individuals wearing masks or head coverings.
“It takes somebody that has no spine and is real yellow to to come down through the roof and do it at night and take something that I’ve worked, and my wife have worked 20 years for,” Dyson said.
Greenwood Police are going through the video and hope to release it to the public soon. They’re also hoping video from the Kroger store will show the suspects on the roof of the building before they broke in.
They will also explore possible connections to another jewelry store burglary from 2013, when burglars come through the roof of McGee’s Jewelers across from Greenwood Park Mall.
