Somewhere in
Duneland a Grinch walks among us.
At 11:33 a.m.
Tuesday, Nov. 26, an unknown woman stole a box and two bags of Christmas
greens belonging to the Town of Chesterton and being placed in planters
throughout the Downtown by volunteers.
The scene of the
crime: the curb on the south side of Broadway, just east of Third Street,
where--at 11:30 a.m., just three minutes before they were boosted--a
volunteer had staged the greens in preparation for distributing them.
The swag: a box
containing 30 winterberry branches valued at $120; a bag of 96 birch
branches valued at $141; and a bag of 12 snowflake branches valued at $53.
The crime, as
caught on multiple video surveillance cameras: the suspect, eastbound on
Broadway in a gray or green Ford Escape with a hatchback, stops in the
middle of the road; exits the vehicle and walks to the west; then returns to
her Ford Escape to place a box and two other objects into the back of the
vehicle.
The suspect: a
white female in her fifties or sixties with short hair, wearing a
long-sleeve shirt blue at the top and white at the bottom and blue jeans
with a pattern on the back pockets.
A volunteer
discovered the theft at 1 p.m.
The investigating
Chesterton Police officer did hazard, in his report, the possibility that
the suspect believed the greens were refuse, inasmuch as the volunteer had
left them approximately six feet from a garbage can.
The theft has been
referred to the CPD’s Investigations Division.
To mark this sad
day in municipal seasonal streetscaping, Chesterton Special Projects
Coordinator Jennifer Gadzala and Assistant to the Town Manager Rebecca
Parker penned the following lament, provided exclusively to the
Chesterton Tribune:
Something is amiss,
something is not right,
Some woman took our
stuff, right out of plain sight.
The winterberries
were red and the snowflakes were silver,
And the sticks
dawned with birch wood were somehow even bigger.
Unfortunate to say
for this time of year,
The Grinch has
struck and stolen our Christmas cheer.
But with hope in
our hearts and wanting peace to end the year,
We hope we can
catch that woman who had no fear.
