St. James store offers $1,000 fireworks party for ID of man after weekend break-in

A St. James-area fireworks store is offering a big reward for anyone who can help identify a person seen on security footage at the time of a break-in Sunday morning.

Red Bomb Fireworks, at 1838 Portage Ave., took to social media in hopes of finding the suspect, and is offering a $1,000 professionally choreographed fireworks display – right in time for Canada Day – to anyone with info that leads to the man’s arrest or conviction.

The store owners say the suspect caused “significant damage” to the front window of the store around 6:30 a.m. Sunday, and appeared on camera in the area again around 8:50 that morning, when he hopped on a transit bus headed east.

Red Bomb co-owner Matt Bialek told 680 CJOB that he was able to watch the break-in happening in real-time via his smartphone.

“Normally Sundays I’m not an early riser,” he said.

“Our facilities are all monitored by video and intrusion threat, and we get direct dispatch to our smartphones if something out of the ordinary happens … and things out of the ordinary started happening at 6:30 a.m. yesterday morning, unfortunately.”

Bialek said the man took a ‘nominal amount’ of products but caused a lot of damage in the process.

“The value of what was taken was absolutely nominal. The damage to the window would be multitudes of times more expensive than what was taken,” he said.

“What happened there reminded me of somebody who needed an infusion of cash very rapidly and they possibly took the goods from the front of the store to sell or barter with.”

Tweet This Click to share quote on Twitter: "What happened there reminded me of somebody who needed an infusion of cash very rapidly and they possibly took the goods from the front of the store to sell or barter with."

According to Red Bomb’s description, the man is around 5’9″ and was seen riding a black mountain bike. The store owners said he was wearing a black hoodie with an image of Marilyn Monroe on the front, a beige cactus-print button-up undershirt, grey sweatpants, a black Snap On hat with red lettering, a red and grey Roots backpack, and black skate shoes.

Based on the security footage, he also appears to smoke king-size cigarettes.

“If there’s some inside humour into the whole situation… this person got in on the door-crasher sale a day before they should have,” said Bialek.

Tweet This Click to share quote on Twitter: "If there's some inside humour into the whole situation… this person got in on the door-crasher sale a day before they should have," said Bialek.

Anyone with information is asked to contact Red Bomb at sales@redbomb.com or contact the Winnipeg Police Service.

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