Child burglars busted at preschool
It may not be the most serious of crimes, but don’t tell that to the folks at Port Loyola Preschool, who since the opening of the academic year have been plagued by burglars. And that plague has struck yet again, only this time with a somewhat different outcome.
Gwendolyn Jones, Principal, Port Loyola Preschool
“We won’t give up. We’ll just try to replace back what we have lost and move on. We have too many children here for us teachers to give up.”
Jacqueline Woods, Reporting
Since the Port Loyola Preschool opened for the new school year in September, the early learning institution has been affected by a series of burglaries. The two most recent incidents occurred on Friday and Monday night. But it was last night’s break in that gave the police and the school’s management a good clue as to what’s been going on.
Gwendolyn Jones
“The space they have to go in, I think it had to be children to go in to get the stuff the adult wanted.”
Some time after ten on Monday night, the pastor who works closely with the preschool had gone to the school building to see if the windows and doors were properly secured after it started raining heavily. However, he quickly became alarmed when he saw lights, heard noise, and then saw a small child climbing out of an opening from under the zinc roof.
Gwendolyn Jones
“One the children was just coming out of the building and they saw him and they ran. He chased him and caught up with one of the children and he brought him back and waited for the police and the other one was coming out the same time.”
The children, identified as an eight and nine year old, are students from a nearby primary school. They gained access into the building by using the sideboard of this crib to reach up to the wooden louvers, which they opened and used to climb to the buildings roof. The dirty walls inside the building showed how the children made their way down into the preschool. Principal Gwendolyn Jones believes the children were also involved in the break in over the weekend and at least one more incident over the summer holiday.
Gwendolyn Jones
“When I entered the building yesterday morning I knew someone was in there, because the place just looked bare. I had just set up a table for Halloween with some lanterns and some little rats for the children when they came in and that table was clean. I had just ordered some characters for the wall and they weren’t up and my shoulders just dropped, I mean again.”
This morning a concerned parent returned some of the stolen on Friday night after she was told where the school supplies had come from.
The two young boys have told police that an eighteen-year-old man is also involved in the burglaries but authorities have yet to pick up that suspect. In the meantime, News 5 understands that the boys will be taken out of their school and sent to youth hostel.
