Man arrested after church safe, Tim Hortons charity box, ATM cash drawer allegedly found inside home

WATCH ABOVE: Man arrested after church safe, Tim Hortons charity box, ATM cash drawer allegedly found inside home. Catherine McDonald reports. 

TORONTO – Police say they found a church safe, a Tim Hortons charity donation box and an ATM cash drawer inside the home of a man accused of a dozen break and enters.

The safe, according to the reverend of the church from which it was allegedly stolen, weighed nearly 600 lbs.

Durham Regional Police arrested Darryl Bowler, 33, Tuesday and charged him with 31 offences, including 12 counts of break and enter. Police allege the crimes spanned Durham region and happened in Bowmanville, Oshawa, and Whitby.

The Burns Presbyterian church was the outlier in a long list of businesses and restaurants Bowler is accused of robbing.

The safe too is an outlier – it contained no money, and according to the church reverend, Jeremy Bellsmith, took at least four people to move several years ago.

The safe was held in a room behind the sanctuary and the reverend believes he – and anyone who might have helped him – must have slid it across the carpet, leaving scratches along the carpet and stairs.

“There’s a mixture of feelings; on the one hand, glad to have the safe, grateful for that. But sad for the individual as well that anybody would find themselves in the position, both desperate enough to have taken the safe, and now in trouble with the law for having made some less than great decisions.”

“Most shocking to us… was to discover that this safe, which we estimate to be about 600 lbs, had been dragged out,” Bellsmith said.

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“It took four of us to move it into place. And these are four, you know, strapping guys in their 20s that got it moved into place. It’s a very heavy safe, one of the old style –we inherited it from an insurance company,” he later said.

The safe was full of archival records detailing the history of the community; minutes, marriage certificates and other documents dating back to the mid-1800s when the church was set up.

“We were saddened to have lost all of that,” he said.

Bowler is also accused of breaking into and stealing nearly $50,000 from ATM’s in the area. In one instance, he’s believed to have taken an entire ATM from the Forever Fresh Coffee and Donuts shop in Oshawa.

Police say the other incidents involved the man breaking through the front door and robbing the ATM near the door.

Police are still investigating.

– With files from Catherine McDonald