Trending
WARREN -- The operators of a West Market Street recycling center who both serve in the military lost about $1,000 in merchandise to thieves this week, but they said they will soldier on.
Chief Operating Officer Noe Lugo and Clover Recycling owner Jenny Smith lost $1,000 in tools sometime Tuesday night/Wednesday morning, so they spent the night in the facility Wednesday night, waiting, in case the person or persons came back.
Their hunch was correct because a little before 8 a.m. Thursday, two young men broke in. Lugo said he chased them and thought he had trapped them in the basement. Smith called 911, reporting what a police dispatcher called an "active break-in" with two young men in the building and Lugo "chasing them through the building."
Smith told the police dispatcher that she reported a burglary the night before as well. She said she did not know whether the suspects had run out of the building or not. Lugo was pretty sure they had not gotten away. An officer was there within two minutes, and six more officers arrived within five minutes, the Warren police report states.
Officers learned they were looking for a guy last seen wearing blue jeans and a gray hooded sweatshirt and a guy last seen wearing a red hooded sweatshirt. Both were wearing "shiesties," according to police radio transmissions. Shiesties is a slang term for masks that cover most of the face, head and neck. The term was popularized by the rapper Pooh Shiesty, who frequently wore such attire in music videos and on stage, according to Wikipedia.
Eight minutes after the first officer arrived, an officer told a dispatcher that a dog was needed, apparently to help locate the suspects. About an hour into the call, an officer told a dispatcher that the search was apparently coming to an end.
"We have checked as much of the building as we can," the officer said.
A police report from the previous day indicated that the owners called Wednesday morning to report the first break-in, noting the tools were stolen and added that the suspect/suspects drank a bottle of bourbon during the commission of the crime and had taken a Nordic custom knife with blade approximately 6 to 8 inches long with a "Nordic image on its handle."
When a newspaper reporter went to the scene after learning about a large police presence at Clover Recycling, Lugo described his attempt to catch the suspects and Smith joked that Lugo was going to need some additional "cardio" before his next encounter with them.