More Soulard Auto Break-ins

Following is a bulletin from Terry Hoffman’s neighborhood blaster. The original e-mail was sent on Saturday, Jan. 16, 2010 by Angel Bostick, owner (along with her husband, Matt) of The Library - described on their website as "one of Soulard’s newest live music venues, The Library offers something for just about everyone." Following is the message as received:

"Just wanted to let everyone know that we had 10 cars broken into last night (Friday Jan 15) and one car was stolen. All of the cars were parked along a wall of a vacant building behind us. At 11:15 my staff had checked on the back and all was fine, then by 12 a customer discovered their car was broken into. The thieves mainly broke car windows, driver and passenger, in one car they actually broke the window after they got inside. Items stolen were a jacket, wallet, a GPS, even leaving more valuable items behind. These "thugs" mission seemed to be just to destroy. However they did steal one car. (A key for that car was left in the console which made it easy pickings.) I just wanted to report this to the group so everyone could keep a closer eye out on vehicles in the area to prevent this happening again. This was reported to the police. The Lieutenants advice was to hire a couple of off-duty officers to guard the parking areas. Hopefully they will catch these thieves quickly. We will be sending out security more often, but they struck within a 30 - 45 min window."

The Library is located at 706 Lafayette in the old Carnagie Library Building, across the street from the Soulard Farmer’s Market.

It is interesting to note that the Safe City Incident Mapping Site seems to cover this entire situation as "one theft" in the 700 block of Lafayette, reported at 10:30 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 15. There is no mention of a car theft at this address. This is how it was covered in our earlier, weekly posting of crime in the neighborhood.