Local business owner uses community ties to catch break-in suspect
How does a tub of nearly a thousand dollars worth of shrimp go missing overnight? Thats the question a local business owner found the answer to pretty quickly. ALBUQUERQUE, N. M. – A break-in at El Sinaloense. . .
How does a tub of nearly a thousand dollars worth of shrimp go missing overnight? Thats the question a local business owner found the answer to pretty quickly. ALBUQUERQUE, N. M. – A break-in at El Sinaloense left more than $1,000 in cash, alcohol, and nearly $1,000 worth of shrimp missing before the owner identified a suspect. Leo Hernandez said he received a phone call on June 17 informing him that someone had broken into his restaurant. “Some guy came in. He broke in. He stole a bunch of stuff from us. He left the back door open, and we didn’t realize that anything happened until some guy called me,” said Leo Hernandez. Hernandez said a man broke in through a window after picking up a large rock, and cameras recorded the damage. “He just smashed it. He picked up a big rock and just threw it in there. You could see him on the cameras that he’s going around looking for a big rock, and he just smashed,” said Hernandez. Without knowing who the man was, Hernandez said he took the suspect’s picture to people in the community around the restaurant, where he said he has built ties over the past six years. “We have a lot of ties to the community, like around here, and I was able to get a photo of him, like a video of him when he was walking through the building, and we started going through previous mugshots just to see if we could find him, and we ended up finding him,” said Hernandez. “And that’s when I asked, like, we know everyone around the area, so I asked everyone around. We found out his name and who he was and everything. ”Hernandez said they identified the man as 44-year-old Fabian Soto. “We, like I tell you, we help out everyone around when we can, and that’s why it was kind of weird to me that someone broke in because we helped them out so much. You know what I mean? So it’s kind of hard,” said Hernandez. Hernandez said the break-in has not changed how he treats people in the area, and he still tries to help when he can. “It’s just you see them and like feel bad for them, and if you could help them with like a burrito or a soda or something, we’ll give it to them. That’s how that helped me out to find out who it was that broke in,” said Hernandez. The owner said the community relationship he built around the restaurant helped him quickly figure out who broke in. For Related Stories:Alika Medina