Saskatchewan RCMP is looking for suspects who robbed 10 businesses or rural municipality offices in five different towns on Friday night.
The break and enters happened early on Jan. 17 in communities along Highway 40, Highway 3 and Highway 378, police say.
More than $16,000 was stolen — without counting the money and merchandise stolen from the businesses from which the employees did not respond to an interview request or who declined to comment.
According to store owners and employees whom did speak to Global News, the suspects began their spree around midnight in Hafford, Sask., approximately an hour northwest of Saskatoon. They broke into the local post office, Communiplex skating rink and then took more than $5,000 in cash, cigarettes and lottery tickets from The Rack Gas Bar, Taylinn Cherwinski, an employee, said.
Next, they robbed the Blaine Lake post office, followed by the Leask Pharmacy and Leask Mart around 3 a.m. They stole more than $6,000 in cigarettes and $500 from the latter location, said Jake Kim, the owner.
After that, they took about $2,500 in tobacco products from the Shell Lake General Store around 4 a.m., according to the owner Joy Ardagh. They also robbed the Shell Lake post office.
About an hour later, they stole around $2,000 worth of shop tools, a laptop and cash from the Rabbit Lake rural municipality office, said Administrator Christina Moore. They also robbed the Shell Lake post office.
No one from Canada Post, the RCMP, the Leask Pharmacy or the Town of Hafford (which runs the Communiplex rink) responded to a request for comment.
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Joy Ardagh, the owner of the Shell Lake General Store, almost collided with the suspects when she and her husband were responding to the alarm.
“As we crossed the intersection in front of the store, the vehicle, by my estimate … would be travelling 60-70 km/h at least, running through the stop sign,” she said on the phone from Shell Lake.
“If we would have been a split second later we would probably would have been t-boned. And then we just whipped around and chased them out of town.”
Kim and Cherwinski, both said they were alarmed by the suspects’ efficiency.
Cherwinski said: “They just knew what they were doing. They knew what they wanted, so it was just like a get in quick, grab what you want and get out. They didn’t really wander around the building to look for things.”
“From the time that they went around the store and from the time when our alarm went off, it didn’t take them long,” she said.
“They’ve got the tools and they’re quick.”
“They went right by my door and directly to the post office,” Moore said.
Kim said he hoped the suspects are arrested soon so that no one else is robbed.
RCMP is asking anyone with information to contact them at 306-310-7867.
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