Black Velvet, Seagrams 7 taken from shelves
Two burglars made off with an assortment of liquor April 23 after breaking and entering the East Side Gilbert Ortega’s Shell Station at 3306 E. Historic Highway 66 at 1:06 a.m. The break-in was the second at the station in as many months. Video surveillance cameras indicate that the robbers were not the same people that hit the station the first time around.
“Upon arrival (with another officer) we noticed the window to the business was shattered,” Gallup patrol officer Victor Rodriguez wrote in a report on the matter.
Rodriguez wrote that a video tape of the incident showed that two still unknown males used a large rock to break a glass partition on the west side of the building. Once the glass was broken, one of the robbers crawled through the window and began handing the second robber several big liquor bottles through the broken window.
A store clerk, who took inventory of the burglary the following day, said the two got away with three to four fifths of Black Velvet and Seagrams 7. He said both of the individuals carried backpacks and took nothing but the liquor bottles.
In the police report, Rodriguez estimated the value of the broken glass at $800. There was no listing of the value of the stolen alcohol.
The same gas station and convenience store was burglarized by thieves on March 26, around the same hour of the morning. In that incident, burglars broke a different west side window of the business and helped themselves to cigarettes, liquor and chewing tobacco, according to a police report on that matter.
The estimated amount of property damage in the March burglary was $1,400, the police report stated. The March burglary was done by juveniles, believed to be from the nearby Indian Hills neighborhood, a store clerk said.
The April robbery was done by two grown men. The two looked to be street people, the clerk said.
By Bernie Dotson
Sun Correspondent
