A Fife shopkeeper has spoken of his shock after brazen thieves ransacked his convenience store by breaking in through the roof.
Rao Saim’s Inverkeithing Convenience Store only opened in the town’s Deas Road in the middle of March but has twice been targeted in the last few weeks.
While the first attempt at gaining entry – just days after the shop opened – failed, the store was not so lucky this time around as a thief or thieves somehow gouged a hole in the roof and helped themselves to more than £1,000 worth of cigarettes and alcohol.
The incident is thought to have happened in the early hours of Thursday morning, and police are investigating.
Mr Saim said: “They’ve just ruined everything.
“Someone tried to break in just a few days after we opened but they were not successful – they were able to break one of the padlocks but they couldn’t break a second padlock and someone called the police.
“But this time they’ve managed to come through the roof and have taken a lot of cigarettes and alcohol.
“Luckily they couldn’t open the till, but there’s a lot of damage been done to the brand new roof.
“Someone called me this morning at 6.15am to tell me that someone had broken in, and someone said they had heard noise at about 4am but they thought it was just normal.”
A number of local people have expressed their support for Mr Saim on social media after pictures of the damage was posted on Facebook.
One described the crime as “disgusting”, while another said: “You’ve brought back a service to the area which has been missing and lots of us appreciate your hard work.
“Hope not too much damage was done.”
The theft was made harder to bear by the fact that Mr Saim had ordered around 10 security cameras after the first break-in attempt, although he was still awaiting an installation date when the criminals struck on Thursday.
“These things can happen but we’ll make sure we have the alarms and everything fitted as soon as we can,” he added.
Anyone who may have information which may help the police’s investigation should contact 101.
