Burglars Strike Coral Bay, Taking Safes From Business and Businessman’s Home

 

V.I. Police Department officials are not talking, of course, but the word in the Coral Bay Corner Park is that investigators may have surveillance video of the perpetrators in the May 19 burglaries at Coccoloba in Coral Bay and fingerprints of the burglar who hauled away the contents of a jewelry store in a shopping cart found near the scene.

CORAL BAY — Coral Bay appears to have a “yegg” problem.

And it has nothing to do with the chickens.

Less than a month after a brazen nighttime burglary and the theft of a cash register and an ATM machine from the Calabash Market on the southeast end of St. John in early morning hours of Friday, April 24, burglars hit businesses in the Coccoloba retail complex on shore of Coral Bay and stole a safe from the private residence of a community business owner in the early morning hours of Tuesday, May 19.

Both incidents were reported by V.I. Police Department simply as burglaries.   There was no further information available from authorities.

In the May 19 incident, a small boutique jewelry store in the Coccoloba complex was “cleaned out” and a safe, reportedly containing a small amount of money, was taken from the Aqua Bistro restaurant, according to St. John Tradewinds sources.

The police do have surveillance video of a suspect, according to a St. John Tradewinds source.

“The guy used a cart from the market to move the stuff from the jewelry store and left the cart at Voyages next door,” the source told St. John Tradewinds.  “The police fingerprinted the cart and then the guy came back and moved it; so they got him on tape again.”

Safes Aren’t Considered Safe
The safe taken from the private residence also contained relatively little money, according to one St. John Tradewinds source.

“Why would anyone keep money in a safe when they are stealing safes?” one business employee asked?.

An employee of the Dolphin Market in the Coccoloba complex was robbed of the store’s receipts in a late-night incident earlier this year.

Ironically, a Coral Bay “crime prevention” meeting is planned for the Caribbean Oasis Restaurant near the Cocoloba complex on the harbor on Wednesday, May 27, from 9 to 10 a.m.   The meeting will be co-hosted by the Coral Bay Community Council and the V.I. Police Department.

The public is invited to attend. The meeting might last more than one hour.