The thieves entered the store at night (from July 28 to 29 this year), using a tunnel and storm drains. They knocked a hole in the floor of a toilet at Carrefour and broke through partition walls into the shops in the shopping arcade.
Apparently, they did not intend to rob the hypermarket. They broke into a jeweller’s shop, a mobile-phone salon and a flower shop. The shop owners say the thieves must have known exactly what height the pipes ran at in the walls, because they broke through to boutiques on different levels in order to avoid obstacles.
“We received a report of the break-in early on Friday morning,” says acting police spokesperson Anna Kublik-Rościszewska. “The police arrived at the scene and secured the tunnel. Officers found two backpacks filled with jewellery and mobile phones, left beside the hole in the toilet floor.”
The thieves disappeared; the loot remained
The Bolesławiec prosecutor’s office is investigating the theft. Investigators do not know why the perpetrators left the loot behind. District prosecutor Regina Haniszewska is certain only that it was not a single person. “Judging by the extent of the damage they caused in the drains, I conclude that there were several thieves,” she stresses.
The police spokesperson reported that, while digging the tunnel, the perpetrators broke through the walls of the storm drain, damaging the pipes in the process. Shop employees in the arcade speculated that the route through the drains had been marked with reflective lights to facilitate the thieves’ swift retreat. The police, however, do not confirm this. “There were no reflective lights in the drains,” Kublik-Rościszewska stresses. “There were some signs painted with spray paint, but clearly they were not route markings,” she adds.
To plan the thefts from the shops in Carrefour’s arcade, the perpetrators must have known the layout of the drains well. They knew where to break through the pipes in order to dig a tunnel several metres long beneath a shop. The storm drains can easily be accessed from the areas along the Bóbr. The entrances are large and completely unsecured. They are sometimes used by adventurous young people. No one had previously used them to steal anything.
The Olsen Gang visiting Bolesławiec?
Internet users have already dubbed Carrefour’s thieves the Olsen Gang—the Danish team from a series of comedy films. The main character, Egon, always planned the perfect theft. Unfortunately, each time the elaborate plan ended in complete failure.
The Carrefour thieves’ carefully developed theft plan also failed. They made their way through drains containing up to several dozen centimetres of cold water, where rats roam. They dug a large tunnel and chose the exit point well. They gathered the loot and, for an unexplained reason, left it in the shop, then vanished like a stone into… the drain.
The robbed jeweller showed our Reader the recovered gold jewellery (a ring). It turned out that he had nevertheless suffered losses, because the valuables, carelessly thrown into a backpack and crushed under mobile phones, were dented and unfit for sale. This may, but need not, indicate that the perpetrators had acted chaotically after all and lacked experience in the thieving trade—particularly in robbing jewellers—because they did not know how to protect the loot in order to sell it profitably later. Or perhaps they were frightened by something, quarrelled or panicked? Perhaps it was meant to be merely a holiday adventure? A prank or a bet? We will probably never know. Let us only hope that the Olsen Gang does not strike Bolesławiec again.
(information: Grażyna Hanaf)