Small Travis County business broken into by 2 burglars
TRAVIS COUNTY, Texas - A small business in Southwest Travis County is recovering after two men broke into their store and stole thousands of dollars’ worth of goods. The suspects are now facing felony burglary charges.
"Just make sure that you have a good security system," iSMASHED USA Co-founder Chuck Seller said.
Footage captured on Sellers’ security system revealed what happened.
The first video from the early morning hours of August 20, showed a man pull up, take a good look inside the shop, examine the lock, stare right into the surveillance camera, walk around, and drive off.
Just two days later, video showed the man was back and this time he had tools to open the door and a sidekick.
When one of the owners of the store showed up a few hours later, he said the door was ajar and when he walked inside, he was shocked.
"All of our stuff was missing. Our repair, screens, batteries, phones, computers," Sellers said. "Fortunately, all our customer stuff, our phones were locked up, so we didn't lose any customers stuff."
Sellers said he called the Travis County Sheriff’s Office, and a deputy came to the shop and took the report.
Sellers estimated about $15,000 worth of stolen items. One was a phone that happened to still be on.
"We were able to trace where that vehicle was with the phone inside," Sellers said.
Sellers said he followed the pinging of the phone.
"I went down there, located the vehicle, looked inside the vehicle, and saw some of our stuff in there," Sellers said.
Sellers said he parked down the street and called law enforcement. Because the address was in the city, the Austin Police Department took the call.
"I stayed down there until APD got there, and that was about two hours later, and they looked inside the car, and they said, 'are you sure that's your stuff', I said absolutely, that's our stuff," Sellers said.
The Travis County Sheriff’s Office, the agency who took the original report, responded to the vehicle and it was towed.
About two weeks later, deputies were able to recover and return most of their things to them. The two suspects, caught on camera, have had arrest warrants issued for felony burglary charges.
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"They need to be caught and shut down," Sellers said.
Meanwhile, iSMASHED hasn’t slowed down since the incident.
"We were in business the next day," Sellers said.
They immediately bought new supplies and got back to work on customer’s orders.