The Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office is asking for assistance in identifying the man who allegedly broke into the Isla Vista Food Cooperative around 3 a.m. on February 1, making out with empty register tills, according to Lisa Oglesby, the Co-op’s board president.
Deputies responded to the Isla Vista location just after 8 a.m. that Saturday after the morning workers “discovered some product that had been tossed on the ground and a broken window,” said Oglesby. Soon after, they realized that the empty register tills were missing. Without them, the register system did not work properly, and they were forced to temporarily close the store.
“We’ve been going through a hard few months as a store, as an organization,” added Oglesby. “We’re already underfunded from lower sales. It felt like, gosh, we just can’t catch a break.”
Luckily, the Co-op’s downtown location had spare register tills, and the Isla Vista location was able to reopen around noon the same day.
“The fortunate thing was that none of our staff were ever in danger,” said Oglesby. “We’ve gotten a lot of love and support from the community and the greater food cooperative community.”
The Isla Vista Foot Patrol is actively investigating the break-in with the help of security camera footage and fingerprints from the scene, said Oglesby. Video footage released by the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office shows the suspect to be a Hispanic male in his late teens or early twenties with chin-length hair, wearing an Oakland A’s baseball hat, a brown coat, blue jeans, and Nike Dunk sneakers at the time of the incident. If the public has any information that would assist in identifying the suspect, they are encouraged to contact the Isla Vista Foot Patrol at (805) 681-4179.