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Penticton  

Store owner fed up with theft

A Penticton liquor store owner is fed up after a string of thefts at his location, including a particularly brazen one last weekend.

Jeff Leonard was working at 1:30 p.m. in the afternoon at the Government Street Liquor Store when a man came into the store and took a bottle of vodka off the shelf and broke it on the floor, by banging on the neck of the bottle.

The man then approached him with the neck of the bottle demanding money.

"This was last Sunday, in the afternoon, during Challenge Penticton," he said. "I wasn't even supposed to be there, but I am glad I was so I could deal with the situation and my employees didn't have to go through trauma."

After the demand, Leonard recalls he proceeded to open the till but was kind of stalling because there was a second worker in the back.

He proceeded to take money out and threw it down on the counter. The thief then put the bottle neck down, grabbed a handful of cash and ran out of the building.

Leonard ran out the door after him, called him a few choice words, then threw the bottle neck at him, narrowly missing his head by a few inches.

He then got in his truck, went in the direction the guy went in and caught up with him in an alley. Two customers from his store were already there, and one of them told the man, "you're not going to get away with this, you might as well give up."

The man then put the cash down and sat down on the ground, and they waited for the police to show up.

Later that same night, he learned that another man had taken a 40 ounce bottle of rye, tucked it down his pants and walked out of the store.

The next day he saw the man at a Penticton store, walked up to him and said "do you mind if take a picture, because I have lots of video of you stealing from my store last night, but no good pictures."

He proceeded to tell the staff at the store to watch the guy.

Leonard plans to continue to take action, including posting theft videos online, alerting the police and adding pictures of people who steal from him to a wall of shame at his store.

"In the last month I've had about four theft incidents at the store, and I want to make sure these guys are caught," he said. 

 



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