Break-in devastating for SPCA

KAMLOOPS – It isn’t the way staff and volunteers at the Kamloops SPCA wanted to spend Victoria Day, assessing and cleaning up the damage from an overnight break-in.

RCMP say they were called to the shelter at 6:30 a.m. to find thieves had smashed in the front door.

Sgt. Michael Buxton-Carr says it appears the suspects disabled the alarm system by cutting the phone line. Once inside they emptied a cash box.

The break-and-enter is a huge blow for the shelter.

None of the animals were harmed or taken.

Branch manager Charleen Holloway says they lost hundreds of dollars in donations and figures there’s about $5,000 in damage.

The break-in is adding insult to injury. The shelter’s 2 vans were vandalized with graffiti recently.

“It’s been really tough for us the last couple of months,” Holloway says. “We’re a non-profit. We don’t have the money to be dealing with this.”

Sgt. Buxton-Carr says there have several break-ins with a similar MO over the past few weeks in the neighbourhood, tampering with an alarm system and then going through a door or window.

Buxton-Carr doesn’t think the SPCA was targeted. He figures the thieves knew they would find what they were looking for once they broke in.

No suspects have been identified, but investigators are talking to people of interest.

“They going to narrow it down,” he says, “Look at the other MOs of the other break-and-enters fairly similar to this and see if they can identify suspects and go from there.”

Meanwhile, Holloway hopes to have the door fixed and their computers online so they can open the shelter to the public as scheduled Tuesday at noon.

Anyone with information that could help investigators can call the Kamloops RCMP at 250-828-3000.

To contact the reporter for this story, email Howard Alexander at halexander@infotelnews.ca or call 250-491-0331. To contact the editor, email mjones@infotelnews.ca or call 250-718-2724.