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Store owner thankful for public support

A Whitehorse business owner is thankful after public tips started pouring in to help find the people who broke into his store in the wee hours of last Friday morning.
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A Whitehorse business owner is thankful after public tips started pouring in to help find the people who broke into his store in the wee hours of last Friday morning.

Sylvio Lin, co-owner of Triniti Technology on Main Street, told the News this week he received hundreds of Facebook messages and phone calls after he released a video of the break-in last week.

“The public’s been super helpful,” he said.

“I’ve had quite a few people bring up some of the names they (allegedly) recognize in the video.”

In some cases he heard from people who claimed the alleged thieves bragged about the break-in, he said.

Lin estimated several thousands of dollars worth of merchandise were stolen from his store.

The thieves took several cameras, iPads, phones, a demo laptop and a Bluetooth speaker, according to Lin.

On Saturday Whitehorse RCMP arrested a 14-year-old boy and charged him with breaking and entering.

Police say they recovered some of the stolen items at a residence they searched on Friday night.

As a result officers issued an arrest warrant for 18-year-old Benjamin Wright on Monday.

It’s not clear whether the residence searched was Wright’s.

Police are still looking for other youth suspects.

The security camera videos Lin released to the media showed the break-in happen.

The police also received a copy of the footage.

A group of five people can be seen gathering around the store’s glass window.

There appear to be three women and two others are hiding their faces behind a hoodie and a cap.

Suddenly the two with their faces covered start breaking the glass window. They run in the store, ripping security devices from phones. The three others are not in the frame anymore.

Those security devices are set to ring when they are removed from the phones.

“When they rip it off it doesn’t damage the phone,” Lin said.

The break-in lasts several minutes according to timestamps on the videos the News looked at.

Forty minutes after the two masked people leave, a woman approaches the broken storefront.

She takes a red box lying inside the store and leaves.

Lin said he tried to make the best of the situation.

Because the break-in happened early in the morning he had time to clean up the broken glass and board the window.

The store only opened 20 minutes late that day.

“We put a funny sign to keep our clients coming in the store,” Lin said.

“Basically business as usual.”

A printed sign, still up today, on the plank used to board the broken storefront reads:

“Someone didn’t listen to Mom and Dad about not taking things that don’t belong to you! Don’t worry; we’re still open while this gets fixed.”

Even though a police technician came in and took swabs to identify fingerprints, security cameras remain a crucial security measure, Lin said.

“If we didn’t provide security footage this case would have gone nowhere.”

He plans to up the company’s security measures but reminisces about the good old days when those concerns didn’t exist.

“Back in the 1990s, 1980s, you could leave the front door unlocked,” he said.

“There was respect.

“There was some sort of common sense that you don’t do those things.”

Anybody with information about the break-in can contact Whitehorse RCMP at 667-5555.

Contact Pierre Chauvin at

pierre.chauvin@yukon-news.com