The owner of the Vilna Pharmacy is feeling thankful for the community after a break-in early in the morning on Nov. 23 destroyed the front of her building.
“We had a concrete bench in front of the store which was basically shattered, we also had steel shutters which were destroyed and then we have bars on the inside of our windows as well and those came off too. They basically rammed it with enough force to take all that apart,” said Rashida Yamani.
Yamani called the break-in devastating.
She said the cost to rebuild the front wall and replace everything they had as deterrents will be approximately $15,000 to $20,000 based on what it had cost previously.
“We were closed one day. We are back up and running as of today, but we were closed Friday. We had to bring in extra staff to clean up and get everything organized again. It’s disheartening as well because we live in fear that this could happen again, because it’s not a one time thing,” said Yamani.
According to Yamani, no narcotics were stolen in the break-in. The thieves also didn’t get any cash because they don’t leave any in the store overnight.
“They’ll have really good diabetes control, really good blood pressure control, and really good cholesterol control for a while. I don’t think that was worth the stress of breaking in,” said Yamani.
Vilna resident Norm Erickson said the break-in is "distressing" to those who live in the community. He says he's noticed an increase in theft and says he's scared to live in Vilna.
"We've got locks on everything," he says, noting from what he's heard, there are a lot of people who have been affected by crime.
Yamani said the store’s alarm went off at 4:03 a.m and she got a phone call from a community member who heard the commotion at 4:08 a.m. She said a member of the Smoky Lake RCMP detachment arrived approximately 40 minutes later.
“I think that sometimes is something else that contributes to our level of crime because they (the criminals) know they have a good window,” said Yamani, when speaking about the length of time it took RCMP to arrive on scene.
Cpl. Laurel Scott of RCMP Media Relations confirmed the Smoky Lake detachment is still investigating the break-in and expects to have a description of suspects and vehicles released in the near future. Those details were not available as of the Journal's press deadline.
“We believe it is a Ford truck that will have substantial rear end damage. We think it has a bush bumper on the front and will have lots of rear end damage,” said Scott.
She said the RCMP have not yet located their suspects or the vehicle involved but “we are actively working on it.”
And despite the fear that some may feel, Yamani said something the break-in really reinforced to her is the knowledge that she lives in a good community.
“The reason we didn’t lose a lot is because when our alarms went off people in Vilna responded, and we had somebody outside our store in five minutes,” said Yamani. “Same thing with cleanup, the reason we were able to get it cleaned up and boarded up in 17 hours and it didn’t take us three days was because we had help from the people of Vilna.”
