Cashland Robbery Still Unsolved

Over two weeks ago, Cashland, a pawn shop on Angola's main street, was robbed. You probably never heard about it. The paper buried it on the back page three days after it happened.

It wasn't a stick-em-up, armed robbers, hands in the air robbery. No, it was the cat burglar, middle of the night type of caper. The likes of which hasn't been seen in our sleepy town since Sears was robbed several years ago.

It seems the four robbers pulled up about midnight in a dark colored full-sized pick up truck. The fact that any type of vehicle was parked near the pawn shop at that hour should have drawn some attention. But it didn't.

Then the four climbed on top of the roof and proceeded to saw a hole into it to gain access to the building. The roof is visible from both directions on North Wayne Street, and even as far away as Tom's Donuts.

Four grown men on a roof should have raised some eyebrows. The sound of a saw at that hour should have caught an ear. But it didn't.

Then the men cut the wires, an inside source tells me, rendering the security system, its alarms and cameras, useless. Any kind of light inside a business at that hour should have been noticed. But it wasn't.

The men then started to drill into the concrete lined safe. After a while, the drill bit broke. The men climbed back out of the roof, still unnoticed, got into a truck that shouldn't have been there, and, covered in dust, dirt and sweat, went to Wal-Mart in the wee hours of the morning for another drill bit. Someone should have thought that four dudes, messy and dirty, doing home improvement while the rest of the world slept was a little funny. But they didn't.

They piled back into the truck, went back into the Cashland the same way, again without anyone seeing a thing, and completed their task of cleaning the place out of cash, gold and electronics. Again they returned to Wal-Mart, this time for a tarp to cover their ill gotten gain. The act took almost four hours.

After a couple of leads, including one women who thought she recognized one of the men from Wal-Mart's grainy security footage, no arrests have been made.

The men are still at large. The items taken are still gone; they most assuredly have been fenced by now.

Hard-working people, unable to make ends meet, are who frequent pawn shops, not drunks or gamblers like in a film noir movie. The belongings pawned are sometimes family heirlooms. After a burglary, victims rarely get their items back or any kind of justice. Our house was robbed two years ago. The culprits were never caught, our belongings never recovered. Burglary is not a crime of immediacy. The act is usually discovered hours later and the perpetrators are long gone. It's sometimes treated with a sense of flippancy, as in no one was actually physically hurt. But the hurt one feels, the sense of violation and distrust of others, lasts a long time.

Anyone with any information should call the APD at 260-665-2121.