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Thorough thief plans Indomart heist
Indah Setiawati , The Jakarta Post , Jakarta | Tue, 09/30/2008 10:18 AM | City
With precise timing and positioning, a thief broke through the wall of an Indomart retail outlet in Duren Tiga, South Jakarta, on Sunday night.
The thief made one hole large enough for someone to crawl through in a wall separating the Indomart and a vacant lot and another hole in the wall at the back of the store.
The passageway between the two walls was very narrow.
The second hole, in the store, was cut precisely between a concrete supporting pole and the cement stairs attached to the wall where the brick wall was easy to puncture.
The store management kept the outlet's cash box on the second floor.
"I think the perpetrator knew the building well and calculated everything," assistant manager Agus Wahyu said Monday.
The store has only been open for one month.
Agus said he believed the perpetrator must have made the hole in the outer wall on the previous day because it was impossible to break through two walls overnight.
He said he and other employees closed the outlet at 11 p.m., arrived the next morning around 6 a.m. and found some shelves behind the cashier's desk and drinks in the refrigerator in disarray.
Agus said he estimated the total loss to be Rp 100 million (US$10,752) as the thief also took cigarettes cartons, expensive cans of powdered milk for babies, bottles of soft drinks and some Rp 50 million from the cash box.
"The perpetrator only took cold drinks, not the ones on the shelves. Maybe all that work tearing down the wall made him thirsty," he said.
He said police came shortly after he notified them, examined the outlet, which was near two local security posts, and gathered information from the employees.
"The hole was patched up and we were ready to open again at around noon," Agus said, adding he planned to put up a lamp on the outer wall so neighboring guards could watch the outlet.
Rhois, 54, a shoe repairman who worked nearby and had helped fix the holes in the two walls, said the area was prone to theft.
"You know that construction supply store next to the Indomart? It's been broken into already three times," he said.
He said the theft from the new Indomart was the first.
"The building's owner used to use the place to sell imported clothes," he said.
