British pub and event venue The Sparrow & Serpent, 211 Washington St., was broken into July 27, resulting in an estimated $4,000 in damages. Someone damaged an ATM and stole around $300 from a safe after forcing it open.
Owner Emily Chappell first noticed something was off when she walked into the building around 2:30 July 29 to prepare for opening and saw the ATM, which the thief attempted to pry open with a power cord – although it seems they did not get anything out of the machine. The establishment's safe also was battered, appearing to have been hacked open with a kitchen knife found lying nearby. All the money inside, around $300, was stolen. The damages did not force the business to close for an extended period, and it reopened July 30 at its regularly scheduled 4 p.m.
"Nothing that impedes operations was damaged," Chappell said. "We did have to do a pretty deep clean of the kitchen and deep clean all the equipment because there was cement dust everywhere, but none of our sound equipment was stolen. Our registers weren't taken."
Although the initial discovery of the break-in left Chappell with a "cold sense of dread," she quickly realized she needed to announce what happened to the public. She decided to take a humorous approach both as a method of coping with the anger and frustration of the robbery and of poking fun at the suspect, who she said was "not a very good thief."
She went with a Facebook post that took the form of a fake Yelp review, an idea from her partner that drew on the restaurant industry's reliance on reviews.
"Out of respect for your local reputation and the traditions of your storied profession, we have given your visage and fingerprints to local law enforcement," a snippet of the post said. "Overall we must rate the experience 1/5, as being broken into and stolen from is a pretty awful experience."
Chappell said some community members already have donated after seeing the post, which she appreciated because the business's insurance deductible is $5,000 and thus will not help offset the repair costs.
Chappell said once she saw the surveillance footage of the robbery, she recognized the suspect as a person who had received free food and water through The Sparrow & Serpent's pay-it-forward programs. She said although the realization that someone she helped may have caused the damage hurt her deeply, it doesn't change her eagerness to help the local community and fill in where the city falls short.
"Just because I recognize that he's probably part of the local homeless community, I don't want that to reflect poorly on them," Chappell said. "I know that people will immediately jump in there and say, 'This is what you get for feeding homeless people,' and I would immediately disagree with that."
She added she believes crimes like this would not occur if there were more supports for people experiencing homelessness, addiction or mental health issues and that it is a lack of resources such as food and shelter that drives people to desperate measures.
An EPD spokesperson confirmed the report and said the investigation is ongoing.
Bettina Wu is a summer reporting intern at The Register-Guard. Reach her at [email protected].
This article originally appeared on Register-Guard: Suspect causes $4,000 in damages to The Sparrow & Serpent pub